Ms. Karla Mae G. Pabeliña is an Associate Fellow at APLN and Chief Research Officer at the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (CIRSS) of the Philippine Foreign Service Institute (FSI). She has been actively involved in Track II dialogues on Nonproliferation and Disarmament in the Asia-Pacific through the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP). Karla is an alumnus of the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP); a recipient of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) Women Scholarship for Peace (Global South: Asia-Pacific); as well as the 2017 United Nations Fellowships on Disarmament.

She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2007. She received her Masters in Strategic and Arms Control Studies with Красный диплом or red diploma from Saint-Petersburg State University, Russian Federation. Prior to her work at the FSI, she was a Research Officer for the Presidential Commission on the Visiting Forces Agreement (PCVF). She also worked as a Research Assistant for the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies (ISDS Philippines), an independent policy research and advocacy institution affiliated with the UP Department of Political Science.