Kyoko Kuwahara specializes in public diplomacy, strategic communications, disinformation, foreign information manipulation and interference, and soft power strategies. She is a research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), Japan, as well as a fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI). After completing a master’s course at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, she joined the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, where she was a research fellow in 2017-2018. She then served as an officer at the Office for Strategic Communication Hub at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 2018-2019 before joining the JIIA. She worked on strategic communications research as an MLI Visiting Fellow in Ottawa, Canada from 2022 to 2023, and is currently based in Tokyo, Japan, where she conducts research on disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) countermeasures in Japan and abroad. Her recent publications include the chapter “Disinformation in Japan: Overview and Response” In Disinformation: A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis (Springer, 2026); Disinformation Warfare (Japanese), co-author (2023); Why is Japan's "Righteousness" Difficult to Convey to the World? Image Competition between Japan, China, and South Korea (Japanese) (2020); and After Sharp Power (Japanese), co-author (2019).