Dr. Stein Tønnesson is a Norwegian peace researcher and historian. His doctoral thesis, defended at the University of Oslo in 1991, was on the international history of the Vietnamese Revolution in 1945. His main areas of research are Vietnam, nation building in Southeast Asia, and the disputes in the South China Sea. In the years 2011-16 he leads a research program at the University of Uppsala on the ‘East Asia Peace’ since 1979. He is a frequent commentator in Norwegian and international media on issues of peace and conflict, and writes regularly for the Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet. He has also worked on energy security and has served as a consultant to several Norwegian companies. Since 2007, he serves on the board of Norfund, a state-owned development finance institution (DFI).