The European Green Deal after the Pandemic

The EU Ambassador, HE DR Micheal Pulch will give an address to an in-person audience at Parliament House in Darwin. If you plan to attend, please register below by clicking the "get tickets" button. The topic of the talk will be announced soon. At 6pm, after the talk by the Ambassador, AIIA National Executive Director Dr Bryce Wakefield will address members of the audience interested in forming a local branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

Dr Michael Pulch is the European Union Ambassador to Australia, following his previous term as EU Ambassador to Singapore.

Before that Dr Pulch headed the Russia Division in the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels, where he coordinated EU policies on Russia and chaired the EU Interservice Group on Russia. Prior to that from 2006 to 2011 he was posted to Beijing as Deputy Chief of Mission of the EU Delegation to China, in charge of EU policies on China and relations with Mongolia.

Dr Pulch entered the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1986, serving in the United Nations Directorate, before he was attached to the German embassy in Seoul as political officer. During his posting to Washington as deputy head of the Economic Section he covered economic aspects of security policy.

In 1995 Dr Pulch joined the US Division of the European Commission in Brussels focussing on US foreign and security policy. From 1999 to 2003, he was posted to the EU Delegation in Tokyo, where he headed the Trade and Commerce Section that defines EU trade policy objectives for Japan. As deputy head of the European Commission's East Asia Division in Brussels until 2006 he worked on political and economic aspects of EU relations with countries in the Far East/Australasia region. He also co-authored the EU's first East Asia Policy Guidelines.

Dr Pulch holds degrees in law and political sciences from the universities of Bonn, Paris and Cambridge. He received honorary citizenships of the State of Tennessee and the City of Little Rock, Arkansas.
He speaks English, German, French and Dutch.

He is married, with two children.

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia.

From 2008 to 2012 Bryce was the associate responsible for Northeast Asian programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In this role, he was responsible for conceiving, designing and organising around 60 events in Washington, including policy briefings in the U.S. Congress, on political issues in Australia, Taiwan, North and South Korea and Japan. He co-organised, with the Wilson Center’s partners, three major annual policy conferences in Tokyo. He has also given talks in Japanese, including for parliamentarians at the National Diet Building

From 2012 to 2018, he was a tenured lecturer of area studies and international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands. At Leiden he taught numerous classes and led programs on the foreign policy and domestic politics of Japan, the politics of East Asia, comparative politics, and the relationship between politics and culture. During his time as a university academic he also delivered training, induction and briefing sessions for Dutch and international diplomats in the Hague and in Japan.

Bryce lived in Japan from 1998 to 2004 and earned his master’s degree from Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy. He earned his PhD in political studies from the University of Auckland.

He speaks English, German, Japanese and is proficient in Dutch.