John D. Ciorciari was appointed as interim provost and executive vice chancellor in Februray 2026. He previously served as dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and he brings extensive experience in academic leadership, faculty engagement and strategic planning. Under his leadership, the Hamilton Lugar School has expanded interdisciplinary programs, strengthened global partnerships and enhanced opportunities for students to connect their academic work to real-world challenges.
Building on Bloomington’s excellence
Before joining IU, Ciorciari was a Professor at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where he served as Associate Dean for Research and Policy Engagement and as director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and International Policy Center. He has been an academic visitor at the University of Oxford, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, an Asia Society Fellow, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, a policy official in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs, and an associate at the international law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He is a longstanding senior legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
Ciorciari has research interests in international politics and international law. Much of his work focuses on international politics in the Indo-Pacific region. His first book, The Limits of Alignment (2010), explored the foreign policy preferences of small states and middle powers navigating great-power rivalry. He has written on U.S., Chinese and Indian foreign policies and engagement in Southeast Asia, and he co-edited The Courteous Power (2021) with Kiyoteru Tsutsui, examining Japan’s distinctive approach to the region.
Ciorciari also has published widely on peacebuilding, including studies of United Nations interventions and international criminal tribunals. He is the author of Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States (2021), examining when and how international actors have shared core governance functions with sovereign states including Cambodia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Timor Leste. He has conducted extensive research on hybrid criminal tribunals and co-authored the book Hybrid Justice (2014) with Anne Heindel, a detailed account of law and politics at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia.
IU Bloomington is renowned for its academic excellence. I care deeply about helping sustain and build on the tradition and positive momentum we have across the Bloomington campus.
John Ciorciari, Interim Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor