By Phenphitcha Wattanataweekul
June 27th, 2026
On June 12, IRSA hosted an Alumni Talk with Pham Quang Dung, a MEXT scholar and PhD candidate at the International Christian University. Pham graduated from TIU around 4 years ago, with a BA in International Relations. His current research focus is on Pluriversal Eco-politics, making the environment its main focus while being sensitive to human-nature relations.
Pham begins his talk with a survey of the audience and where they are in their career path, posing a question that many have in mind, “What can we do with an IR degree?” He reassures the audience that feeling lost is normal, since an International Relations degree does not lend itself to an immediate career path. He gives an ambiguous, but correct answer :
“you can do anything with an IR degree”
He further explains that in IR, there is a unique innate freedom. He gives examples by reflecting on the diversity of career paths from other people that he interacted with. Pham’s friends went into various fields like IT, Translation, NGO, consulting firms, researching chemical weapons, migrant labor problems, counterterrorism organization, some even got jobs at the World Bank or NATO. Drawing from lessons he learned in Professor Yamamoto’s class, Introduction to Political Science, he discovers the joy of research and world discovery. The class taught him that there is a possibility to contribute to the world by solving problems and making an impact on people. From his lessons with Professor Blackwood and Professor Lamont, he also learned another important skill, critical thinking. By learning how to break problems down and finding creative solutions, not letting prejudice cloud judgment but to learn how to be empathetic and kind, he finds that these two skills give IR graduates freedom. He compares life to a research question in which it is an endless puzzle, however one could set its terms, like being put in the driver’s seat of one’s life, as long as one has these skills, one has a lifelong foundation to accomplish whatever they put their minds to.
Pham continues his anecdote with his time at London School of Economics as a Masters student. It is one of the most prestigious universities in the world that a person could get into and is also famous for its IR program. His time at LSE significantly boosted his confidence because of how he was surrounded by highly confident and ambitious people. These people inspired him to have trust in himself, and he passes on that lesson to the audience. He proposes that TIU students hold great potential, and should be proud of their achievements because we have great faculty and great alumni who are successful. With confidence and conviction, one should set a goal of what they aspire to be and proactively engage with focus.
Pham ends the talk with a philosophical take on happiness and meaning. He invites the audience to think of an important aspect of the desire to have a purpose, to serve a community, to contribute to something greater than yourself. He offers a connection to the theory of alienation by Karl Marx. It stipulates that humans work because it is in our nature, because it gives our life purpose. However not all work is meaningful. Work, if not for a life fulfilling purpose, can be alienating to the labor itself, each other, our product of labor, and our “essence” of humanity by it being reduced into day to day survival just making money to go by. He admits that alienation is inevitable in the capitalistic society we live in, but also poses a question to the audience of what kind of work would give your life meaning than not, and how to turn it around when inevitably alienation comes in. His own answer is to integrate relationship and service. He studies what he does now : environmental politics, more specifically the epistemology. His conclusion from it is there is a dominant narrative of nature as a resource to be exploited not something to conserve or relational dependence with other things. However humans depend on each other to survive. We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. What is important in life is the joy, the emotional fulfillment and how one could be of service or connect to a community to serve a purpose they believe in.
Pham’s talk inspires students to aspire to ambitiously choose a career path and choose anything they want as long as it contributes to a life purpose and brings them joy. The most important part about work that he pointed out is how work could be of service to oneself and others, and how to cultivate deep and meaningful relationships with the world and others at large. Amidst the world today, most people are ridden with uncertainty and fear, and that is a normal part of life. Pham reminds the audience that students are the future, and in a world that is increasingly insecure, the need for motivated and kind hearted people in politics is never more than now. It will nonetheless be a challenging journey but with an IR degree one could be the source of change they would like to see in society by making their work contribute to a purpose and cultivate strong, lasting relationships with others around them. To quote Paul McCartney, Pham’s talk could be summarized as “Think globally, act locally”.