Carla P. Freeman is a senior expert in the China program at the US Institute of Peace. For more than a decade, she was a member of the China Studies faculty at SAIS, where she also served as director of the School’s Foreign Policy Institute.  With FPI Senior Fellow Mark White she leads FPI's Diplomatic Capacity Index project, which she launched in 2017.  Before joining SAIS, she worked on international civil society and sustainable development for The Johnson Foundation and as a political risk consultant focused on Asia. She is a graduate of Yale University, Sciences Po in Paris, and Johns Hopkins University, where she completed her Ph.D. in international relations and China at SAIS.  She specializes in China's foreign policy, nontraditional security issues, and US-China relations.  Recent published work includes a comparative study of China’s policies in the high seas and outer space, which won The China Quarterly's 2020 Gordon White Prize.