Pongphisoot (Paul) Busbarat

Pongphisoot (Paul) Busbarat is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China, Carnegie’s East Asia-based research center on contemporary China. He is also assistant dean and assistant professor in International Relations at the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, and serves as the director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Thailand.

He holds a PhD in Political Science & IR from Australian National University and postgraduate degrees from Columbia University and Cambridge University. His research interests include great power competition in Southeast Asia, (especially the Mekong subregion), Thailand’s foreign policy, and norms and identity in IR. Currently, Paul is working on several research projects including the study of a normative construct influencing Thailand’s foreign policy choices between the United States and China, and a study of China’s regional leadership consolidation in the Mekong subregion. His most recent publication is “‘Bamboo Stuck in the Chinese Wind’: The Continuing Significance of the China Factor in Thailand’s Foreign Policy Orientation”.