Saadia Pekkanen

Expertise: Space law, space security, space policy, space diplomacy, Small-Satellites-Big Data (SSBD)

Saadia M. Pekkanen is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the founding director of the Space Law, Data and policy Program, founding co-director of the Space Policy and Research Center; and the founding director of the Qualitative Multi-Method Program. She is also founding co-chair of the US-Japan Space Forum, under the auspices of The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.

She works at the intersection of international relations and international law, specializing in the commercial, legal and security policies shaping outer space affairs. She also investigates contemporary geopolitical change through the lens of infrastructure investment in maritime ports. Her regional expertise is in the foreign affairs of Japan and Asia, engaging broader themes of states, strategy and governance in the world order. She is interested in the teaching and practice of qualitative methods, and in leveraging their significance for big data studies in the social sciences. Her present research looks at the Small Satellites-Big Data (SSBD) architecture that is reshaping prospects for humanitarian, environmental, social, cultural, developmental and international security realities in the world.