Lan T. Chu

Professor, Diplomacy and World Affairs
B.A., M.A., New York University; Ph.D., George Washington University
Department Chair, Diplomacy & World Affairs
Appointed In
2005
Office
Johnson 205
Hours
Tue 10:00-12:00 pm, Fri 9:00 - 10:00 am (zoom appt. only)
lchu@oxy.edu
(323) 259-2780

Chu’s research and teaching interests focus on religion and politics/international relations theory, the Catholic Church and global politics, faith diplomacy, inter-religious dialogue, political ideologies (theory and practice), and the political liberalization processes of former and existing communist countries.

She is the co-author of  (Routledge Press, 2025) and Ideology: A Primer for the Exercise of Power or its Resistance (forthcoming Routledge Press, 2027).

Her articles have appeared in Politics and Religion, Democratization, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, CPD Perspectives on Faith Diplomacy, East European Politics and Societies, and BBC News. She has contributed numerous chapters on religion and politics, was the guest editor for a special section of the - “The Vietnamese American Diaspora Since 1975” and co-editor for a special issue of Religions -   (2025).

Currently, she is working on a research project that examines the Catholic Church’s position on global issues.  She theorizes how this amount to an unofficial foreign policy on matters of conflict, peace, climate change, and migration.  

Professor Chu has received a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California, served on the Executive Council of the Western Political Science Association (2018-2021), a Country Expert for the University of Gothenburg’s Varieties of Democracy Project, and an editorial board member of the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities.  She was awarded Oxy’s Linda & Tod White Teaching Prize (2022) and the Faculty Prize for Advising Excellence (2025).  In 2022, she was appointed as the inaugural Faculty Director for Equity and Justice.

Selected Publications:

  • “,”&Բ;&Բ; (Brill Press, 2026).
  • Co-Authored with A. Kammas, “Religion and Citizenship,” in , (Routledge Press, 2024).
  •  UCA News (2024)
  • “,” Politics and Religion, (2022): 1-20.

COURSES 

DWA 101 - International Relations: The Changing Rules of the Game

DWA 236 - Ideology at the Extremes

DWA 237 - Cuba, China, Vietnam: Communism in a Post Communism World

DWA 299 - Qualitative Methods and Research Design

DWA 310 - Junior Seminar: Religion and Politics

DWA 337 - Junior Seminar: International Relations Theory

DWA 490 - Senior Seminar in Diplomacy/World Affairs