Hong Kong To Nguyen (VNM) is a PhD student in International Relations at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. She received a BA in philosophy and political science from Columbia University and an MSc. in International Relations from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. She previously worked as a media monitoring analyst at the private company Vietnam Panorama in Hanoi where she closely tracked Vietnam’s socioeconomic and political developments. As a Japanese government (MEXT) scholar, she is now studying maritime security and international law in the South China Sea. Besides graduate school, Nguyen is also a part-time non-resident researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research of Phenikaa University, Hanoi where she has contributed to numerous publications on Vietnamese social sciences and public health.