Xuan W. Tay

Dr. Xuan W. Tay is a postdoctoral legal fellow who has won multiple international prizes. He is the recipient of the European Society of International Law’s Early-Career Scholar Prize 2025; the Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal 2020 and Chief Justice Prize 2020 awarded by the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Law; and the American Society of Comparative Law’s Phanor J. Eder Prize (Honorable Mention) 2018. He graduated as Valedictorian and best graduating student from the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law (L.L.B., 2020), and as a Fulbright Scholar on the Dean’s List from Georgetown University Law Center (L.L.M., 2022).

Dr. Tay's academic interest lies in the intersection between international law and international politics. Specifically, he studies how humans construct legal and geopolitical realities, and in the other direction, how the same realities shape human experiences. His current preoccupations are narratives, nationalism, group dynamics, and violence, and their relationship to international law and politics. He is currently working on a book project that studies the role narratives of Chinese history play in shaping China's approach to international law. He is also working on an article that addresses the complicated relationship between international law and violence. Outside his existing preoccupations, he is engaged with issues relating to global security, hybrid conflict, information operations, international dispute settlement, humanitarian law, law of the sea, space law, neo-realism, Indo-Pacific geopolitics, comparative constitutional law, immigration law, property law, diaspora politics, gender, and race. His works have been published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law and the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Prior to joining academia, Dr. Tay clerked at the International Court of Justice as a Judicial Fellow to the President, H.E. Judge Joan E. Donoghue.