Kuik Cheng-Chwee
Kuik Cheng-Chwee is professor of international relations at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM).
He is concurrently a nonresident senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Foreign Policy Institute.
Professor Kuik’s research focuses on non-big powers’ alignment behavior, Southeast Asian international relations, and Asian security. Cheng-Chwee is author of Theorizing Hedging: Explaining Shifts and Variations in Alignment Choices (Cambridge, 2026), co-author (with David Lampton and Selina Ho) of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia (2020) and co-editor (with Alice Ba and Sueo Sudo) of Institutionalizing East Asia (2016).
He serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Southeast Asia, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Asian Politics and Policy, and several other international journals. He holds an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He has been listed in Stanford University’s Top 2% Scientists, subfield International Relations, since 2023.