Haitong Du

I am a DPhil (PhD) student in International Relations at Balliol College, University of Oxford. I hold an MPhil in International Relations from Pembroke College, Oxford and a BA in International Relations (Phi Beta Kappa) from Tufts University. My current research focuses on how the rise of personalist leaders influences the international structure, particularly in the context of contemporary US-China relations. I explore how interactions between great powers have become increasingly informal, discretionary, and leader-driven in a world drifting away from institutional constraints. I maintain a secondary research interest in European diplomatic history from the 17th century onwards. 

An active tutor across colleges within the University of Oxford, I have taught the following papers as part of the Final Honours School for degrees in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics, and History & Politics: International Relations (core paper), International Relations in the era of the Two World Wars, International Relations in the era of the Cold War, and Politics in China. 

Whilst at Tufts, I enrolled in the 2019-20 Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC), focusing on the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. I have been professionally and personally indebted to the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), under the direction of Prof Abiodun Williams and Heather Barry. As I graduated from Tufts in 2022, I was connected to Prof Sherman Teichman, whose mentorship and intellectual generosity have continued to shape my thinking on international affairs, especially during this transformative era of global power realignment and democratic uncertainty. 

You may reach me by emailing haitong.du [at] politics.ox.ac.uk.