Naosuke Mukoyama (born 1992) is a Japanese scholar of international relations and comparative politics and an associate professor at the Institute for Future Initiatives, the University of Tokyo. After studying at the University of Tokyo, he earned a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and subsequently served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research examines the historical formation of sovereign states and the international order, with particular interests in resource politics, decolonization, and historical international relations. In "Fueling Sovereignty: Colonial Oil and the Creation of Unlikely States," he examines Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain to show how oil strengthened the bargaining power of local rulers during decolonization, helping these territories resist incorporation into larger political units and emerge as independent states.
