BRUNSWICK — Bowdoin College will host Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. Her lecture is titled “The Asian Century: Myth and Reality.”

Thornton, a Bowdoin College alumna, has been the acting assistant secretary of state since March 9. She served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary since February 2016, after a year and a half as Deputy Assistant Secretary for China, Mongolia, and Taiwan.

A career member of the United States Foreign Service, Thornton joined the State Department in 1991 and has spent the last 20 years working on US policy in Eurasia, focused on the countries of the former Soviet Union and East Asia. Previous Foreign Service assignments include deputy chief of mission to the US Embassy in Turkmenistan, deputy director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department in Washington, economic unit chief in the Office of Korean Affairs, and overseas postings in Beijing, Chengdu, Yerevan and Almaty.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Thornton worked at the Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, DC, where she researched and wrote about Soviet bureaucratic politics and contemporary Russia. She speaks Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

The lecture is sponsored by the Bowdoin College Department of Government and Legal Studies with support from the John C. Donovan Lecture Fund and by the Office of the President.

Comments are not available on this story.