Kuik Cheng-Chwee is an associate professor in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia, and concurrently an associate fellow at the Institute of China Studies at the University of Malaya. Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton-Harvard “China and the World” Program. Cheng Chwee researches and publishes on weaker states’ alignment behavior, regional multilateralism, and East Asian security. His essay ’The Essence of Hedging’ was awarded the biennial 2009 Michael Leifer Memorial Prize by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He is a co-editor (with Alice Ba and Sueo Sudo) of Institutionalizing East Asia: Mapping and Reconfiguring Regional Cooperation (Routledge 2016). Dr Kuik serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Southeast Asia, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and Asian Perspective, as well as Routledge’s IR Theory and Practice in Asia Book Series. He holds an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews, and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University.