Salvador Santino Regilme (born 1986) is an interdisciplinary researcher of International Relations and human rights, and he is a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations (Universitair hoofddocent) based at the Institute of History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Born in the Philippines and educated in Germany and the United States, he is a Dutch scholar focusing on international human rights norms, North-South relations, global security issues, and contemporary United States foreign policy. At Leiden University, he serves as the Program Chair of the MA in International Relations.

More information about Salvador Santino Regilme

Overview

Salvador Santino Regilme  (born 1986) is an interdisciplinary researcher of International Relations and human rights, and he is a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations (Universitair hoofddocent) based at the Institute of History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Born in the Philippines and educated in Germany and the United States, he is a Dutch scholar focusing on international human rights norms, North-South relations, global security issues, and contemporary United States foreign policy. At Leiden University, he serves as the Program Chair of the MA in International Relations.

He is the author of Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2021), which received several accolades, including the 2023 Cecil B. Currey Book Award from the Association of Global South Studies and 2024 Best Book in Human Rights - Honorable Mention from the International Studies Association's Human Rights Section. His most recent monograph is United States and Chinese Foreign Assistance and Diplomacy: Aid for Dominance (Manchester University Press, 2026, coauthored with Obert Hodzi). He is the sole editor of Children's Rights in Crisis: Multidisciplinary, Transnational, and Comparative Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 2024) and The United States and China in the Era of Global Transformations: Geographies of Rivalry (Bristol University Press, 2024). He is the principal co-editor of Human Rights at Risk: Global Governance, American Power, and the Future of Dignity (Rutgers University Press, 2022) and American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers (Routledge, 2018). He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in established journals in the social sciences, humanities and law, as well as peer-reviewed book chapters, book review articles, and op-ed pieces

Curriculum Vitae

Salvador Santino Regilme  (born 1986) is an interdisciplinary researcher of International Relations and human rights, and he is a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations (Universitair hoofddocent) based at the Institute of History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Born in the Philippines and educated in Germany and the United States, he is a Dutch scholar focusing on international human rights norms, North-South relations, global security issues, and contemporary United States foreign policy. At Leiden University, he serves as the Program Chair of the MA in International Relations.

He is the author of Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2021), which received several accolades, including the 2023 Cecil B. Currey Book Award from the Association of Global South Studies and 2024 Best Book in Human Rights - Honorable Mention from the International Studies Association's Human Rights Section. His most recent monograph is United States and Chinese Foreign Assistance and Diplomacy: Aid for Dominance (Manchester University Press, 2026, coauthored with Obert Hodzi). He is the sole editor of Children's Rights in Crisis: Multidisciplinary, Transnational, and Comparative Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 2024) and The United States and China in the Era of Global Transformations: Geographies of Rivalry (Bristol University Press, 2024). He is the principal co-editor of Human Rights at Risk: Global Governance, American Power, and the Future of Dignity (Rutgers University Press, 2022) and American Hegemony and the Rise of Emerging Powers (Routledge, 2018). He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in established journals in the social sciences, humanities and law, as well as peer-reviewed book chapters, book review articles, and op-ed pieces.

He received his Joint PhD in Political Science and North American Studies (2015) from the Freie Universität Berlin with joint supervision with Yale University (Dissertation Mentoring Committee: Professor Lora Viola [Chair], Susan D. Hyde, and Thomas Risse). He holds a MA in Political Science (Democratic Governance and Civil Society) from the Universität Osnabruck on a DAAD Public Policy and Good Governance Fellowship, and prior to this, he studied in German language in Göttingen and philosophy and political science from De La Salle University-Manila (BA Philosophy, Jose Rizal Honors Society)

He worked as a Käte Hamburger Fellow on global cooperation based in Germany (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research), as a Fox International Fellow at the MacMillan Center for Area and International Studies at Yale University, and he briefly held a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of International Relations within the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, USA⁠. He was also a visiting researcher at the Comparative Constitutionalism Group of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany⁠. He is the recipient of 2022 Individual Fellowship from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam⁠.

Fields of interest

Human Rights; Global War on Drugs; Dehumanization; United States Foreign Policy; Global Politics of Dehumanisation; Foreign Aid; Foreign Policy Analysis; International Relations Theory; Democratization; The Rise of Reemerging Powers and Global Transformations.

Research agenda

My research critically examines how global power asymmetries—shaped by foreign aid, geopolitical competition, economic inequality, and state violence—undermine human rights, democratic governance, and human dignity, particularly in the Global South. By integrating insights from International Relations, political economy, and critical human rights studies, I explore how dominant actors—whether states, corporations, or elites—deploy coercion, economic influence, and technological control to sustain unequal global orders. At the same time, my work seeks to uncover the structural conditions that enable resistance, alternative governance models, and pathways toward justice in an era of rising authoritarianism, oligarchy, and digital capitalism.

Three Fundamental Questions

1. How do global powers use economic and security tools—such as foreign aid, coercion, and surveillance—to shape political and human rights outcomes?
I interrogate how major powers, particularly the United States and China, wield foreign assistance, economic leverage, and security cooperation as instruments to entrench geopolitical dominance while often exacerbating human rights violations. In my recent book United  States and Chinese Foreign Assistance and Diplomacy: Aid For Dominance (Manchester University Press, coauthored with Obert Hodzi), I examine the strategic logic of U.S.–China aid competition, challenging the notion that foreign aid is apolitical or benevolent and highlighting its role in reinforcing authoritarianism and dependency.

2. How do economic and political elites sustain oligarchic dominance, and what does this mean for democracy and human dignity?
I explore how extreme wealth concentration translates into legal and constitutional mechanisms that marginalize broad populations, undermining socio-economic rights and democratic accountability. I theorize how super-rich actors deploy neoliberal frameworks to cement oligarchic constitutional orders, eroding democratic institutions and human dignity.

3. How do narratives and technologies of dehumanization enable systemic injustice, and what avenues exist for meaningful resistance?
I investigate how framing and tools—rhetoric in the “war on drugs,” algorithmic profiling, and digital surveillance—cast certain populations as expendable, and I chart the legal, political, and grassroots strategies that reassert dignity and foster alternative, rights-based governance.

By interrogating power’s deployment, the subversion of rights, and the politics of dehumanization, my agenda aims not only to critique existing global orders but to illuminate concrete pathways toward a more just, inclusive world.

Research projects

United States and China in the Post-Second World War Global Order: Varieties of Contestations

This research project explores a central and enduring puzzle in global politics: How have diverse actors—ranging from small and medium-sized states to international institutions and non-state organizations—navigated, shaped, and contested the evolving global order marked by strategic rivalry between the United States and China since the end of the Second World War?
Project outline and project members [PDF]

Grants and awards (selected)

• 2024 Best Book in Human Rights- Honorable Mention, International Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, USA – award for the book Aid Imperium (University of Michigan Press, 2021)
• 2023 Finalist/Shortlist – John Peterson Best Paper Prize of The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (BJPIR)– for the paper: Regilme, S. S. F. (2023). Crisis politics of dehumanisation during COVID-19: A framework for mapping the social processes through which dehumanisation undermines human dignity. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 25(3), 555-573. https:⁠/⁠/doi.org/10.1177/13691481231178247
• 2023 Cecil B. Currey Book Award from the Association of Global South Studies, Georgia, USA – award for the book Aid Imperium (University of Michigan Press, 2021)
• 2022 Best Scholarly Article Award – Honorable Mention, American Sociological Association - Human Rights Section (awarded on August 2022 Annual Conference in Los Angeles, CA, USA), for the paper “Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines”
• Awardee, Competitive Fellowship, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, Amsterdam (NIAS), September 2022-January 2023
• Finalist (Aid Imperium, University of Michigan Press, 2021) in the “Political and Social Sciences” Category of the 2021 Foreword INDIES Book Award
• Invited Keynote for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 4th Alejandro Roces Professorial Lectures, Far Eastern University, Manila-Philippines, February 2022
• 2019 Best Conference Paper Award, International Studies Association (ISA), Asia-Pacific Conference in Singapore. Award given at the ISA General Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 2020. Inaugural winner.
• Research Grant: Conference and Workshop Organization, Global Human Rights at Risk? Challenges, Prospects, and Reform, Leiden University’s Global Interactions Grant (7,500 Euros) – Principal Investigator
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award, 42,000 Euros (12 Months Tax-Free Fellowship), Center for Global Cooperation Research, Käte Hamburger Kolleg – Center for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany – Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, 2015-2017
• New PhD Grant, University Research Coordination Office, De La Salle University-Manila, Philippines, 2000 US Dollars, 2016-2017
• Fox International Fellowship, Yale University – MacMillan Center for Area and International Studies, 23,200 USD plus 2,000 USD travel grant, First Non-German to Win the Free University of Berlin’s slot for the Fox Fellowship at Yale University 2013-2014
• DFG Excellence Initiative – Free University of Berlin Dissertation Completion Fellowship, October 2014 to March 2015, 9,000 Euros
• German Research Foundation (DFG-Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Excellence Initiative Scholarship, for PhD Research at the Graduate School for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin 54,000 Euros (Living Expenses for 36 months) and 6,000 Euros (Travel Grant), October 2011 to September 2014
• DAAD Public Policy and Good Governance Scholarship (2009-2011) – Goethe Institute Göttingen and MA in Democratic Governance and Civil Society at Universität Osnabrück, Fully Funded Scholarship

Recognition

• Ranked 2nd in the World’s 2024 Top Scholars in Human Rights Field (Prior Five Years) - Scho larGPS and recognized as "Highly Ranked Scholar"  - https:⁠/⁠/scholargps.com/specialties/93856936441734/human-rights 
• Named as One of the “100 Leaders of Tomorrow” the 42nd St. Gallen Symposium, Universität St. Gallen in Switzerland, 2012

Key publications

1. Regilme, Salvador Santino and Hodzi, Obert. (2026). United States and Chinese Foreign Assistance and Diplomacy: Aid for Dominance. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
2. Regilme, Salvador Santino F. Jr. (ed.) (2024). The United States and China in the Era of Global Transformations: Geographies of Rivalry. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
3. Regilme, Salvador Santino F. Jr. & Irene Hadiprayitno. (Eds.) (2022). Human Rights at Risk: Global Governance, American Power, and the Future of Dignity. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.  [edited volume]
4. Regilme, Salvador Santino F. Jr. (2021) Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia. Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies Book Series. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press
5.  Regilme, Salvador Santino F. Jr. & Irene Hadiprayitno. (Eds.) (2022). Human Rights at Risk: Global Governance, American Power, and the Future of Dignity. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.  [edited volume]

Publications

Activities