Mark Manantan is a Research Fellow at La Trobe University’s Centre for Global Security. His work sits at the intersection of emerging technologies, foreign and defence policy, strategic competition, and regional cooperation. He focuses particularly on the security, resilience, and governance of artificial intelligence, cyberspace, and critical supply chains across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. He is also affiliated with the Centre’s Blue Security Program.

Alongside his role at La Trobe, Mark is a member of UNESCO’s AI Experts Without Borders, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, and a member of the Institutional Advisory Board of the Australian National University’s Philippines Institute. In 2025, he served as a Visiting Fellow at Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies under the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo.

Prior to joining La Trobe, Mark was the inaugural Director and Senior Fellow for Cybersecurity and Critical Technologies at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, Hawai'i (2021–2025). There, he led region-wide research, policy dialogues, and flagship initiatives, including Cyber ASEAN capacity-building programs, CONVERGE: The Indo-Pacific Critical Tech Forum 2024, and trilateral and bilateral efforts on U.S.–Japan and U.S.–South Korea cooperation in cybersecurity and critical technologies.

Mark has also held research fellowships and advisory roles with a range of international organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions, including the Stimson Center, the Japan Foundation, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (Taiwan), ASEAN-Japan Centre, the Asia Society Policy Institute, and the East-West Center in Washington, D.C.

Before his career in technology and international affairs, he was a media and strategic communications executive at Havas and Grey Group managing global companies and organizations like Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, and UNICEF.