Bio

Xiaoyu Lu is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Peking University, where he founded PeaceLab, a platform for field-based research and dialogue on conflict and peace. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University and worked with the United Nations Development Programme in Myanmar. He received his MSc and DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, and earlier studied International Relations and Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

He is also a writer. His work explores war and international relations. Combining academic research, fieldwork, and literary writing, his work has taken him to Syria, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Myanmar, Colombia, and Venezuela. He is the author of the academic monograph Norms, Storytelling and International Institutions in China: The Imperative to Narrate, the novel 水下之人 (Man Underwater), and the non-fiction work 利马之梦 (Lima Dream). His writing and commentary have appeared in major international and Chinese media, and he regularly engages academic, policy, and public audiences on war, peace, and global politics.