Cheng Xu

Cheng Xu is an Assistant Professor of Government. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto. His teaching interests include qualitative research methods, international relations, comparative politics, conflict and security studies, genocide and mass atrocities, as well as Southeast Asian politics.

Xu’s research interests are insurgency, civil war, genocide, and mass political violence with a particular focus on the Southeast Asia region. Using the Philippines as a case study, he examines how civilian communities leverage social relations and norms to bargain and assert their interests against armed groups.

Before coming to Smith, Xu worked as a research fellow and senior policy analyst with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, working to advance Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy. He is also a veteran of the Canadian Army, serving for nearly a decade as an infantry officer and paratrooper and served on one overseas deployment in 2014.

Peer-Reviewed

Xu, Cheng & Victoria Catterson. (2024). “Meta-Analysis of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Implications for a Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.” Violence and Gender 11, no. 2, 59–71.

Persad, Sian & Cheng Xu. (2023). “The Social Determinants of Health and Genocide: Towards a Public Health Integrated Framework of Genocide and Mass Violence.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 17, no. 2, 1–21.

Xu, Cheng. (2023). “Diplomacy in a Social Media Environment: The Bargaining Model Revisited.” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 30, no. 2, 129–143.

Xu, Cheng. (2023). “Cherry-picking Tradition and Selective Modernization: The Insurgency of the Indigenous Cordillerans of the Philippines.” Civil Wars 25, no. 1: 77–102.

Bertrand, Jacques & Cheng Xu. (2023). “Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities.” In Routledge Handbook of Civil and Uncivil Society in Southeast Asia, edited by Eva Hansson and Meredith Weiss. London: Routledge, 242–259.

Xu, Cheng. (2020). “Critical Barriers to Joint-Production: Datu Politics and Insurgent Fragmentation in Southern Philippines.” Third World Quarterly 41, no. 5: 881–897.

Xu, Cheng. (2019). “The Critical Impasse of Peacebuilding: Towards an Analytically Eclectic Critique of Liberal Peacebuilding.” International Journal 74, no. 4: 581–599.

Xu, Cheng. (2018). “Nationalism, Necessary and Sufficient for Genocide? A Counterfactual Account through Comparative Case Study of Nazi German, Shōwa Japan, and Fascist Italy.” Genocide Studies International 12, no. 2: 234–252.

Xu, Cheng. (2018). “Draining the Sea’: Counterinsurgency as an Instrument of Genocide.” Genocide Studies International 12, no. 1: 6–25.

Other Publications

Xu, Cheng. “No one prepares us for the trauma of coming home from fieldwork.” University Affairs (July 2023).

Xu, Cheng & Jacques Bertrand. “Barangay Elections in the Bangsamoro: A Crucial Test for the Future of the BARMM.” The Diplomat (June 2023).

Norlöff, Carla & Cheng Xu. “The Networks and Hidden Procedures that Keep Discrimination Alive in Academia.” The Duck of Minerva (July 2020).