How did you come to choose your research topic — the making of time in international law?
To come across and eventually decide on this research topic was a process informed by many elements, including the many thought-proving conversations colleagues and friends. One of the main reasons was perhaps my personal obsession with the concept of “time” in general. I take great interest in the debates surrounding time in disciplines like philosophy and physics, as well as in watches and clocks.
Can you describe your thesis questions and the methodology you use to address them?
The main research question is: How does the element of time manifest itself in legal norms, legal instruments, legal reasoning and arguments in international law? On this premise, the research focuses on analysing the reasons why the notion of time plays out differently in different sites of international law. The key methodology is discourse analysis. Drawing from the notion of “saying as doing” as in the pragmatist philosophy, the idea is that how temporal issues are talked about and narrated in legal discourse has practical consequences.
What are your major findings?
“Time” is far from being merely a notion in the discourse of international law — it is not even a singular or uniformed notion. “Time” has been conceptualised and deployed in a variety of ways. It has been moulded and invoked to serve different functions across the different sites of international law. More intriguingly, time as a concept is deeply connected to the power relations and power structures of the international legal system. This concept has been purposively construed and invoked to shape the varying aspects of the international legal system as we know it today.
What are you doing now?
I have taken up a lectureship at Tilburg University’s Law School, in the Netherlands. The plan is to continue on this journey as an academic and scholar in international law.
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Junteng Zheng defended summa cum laude his PhD thesis in international Law, titled “The Making of Time in International Legal Discourse”, on 26 May 2025. Professor Fuad Zarbiyev presided over the committee, which included Professor Andrea Bianchi, Thesis Supervisor, and Professor Larissa van den Herik, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Citation of the PhD thesis:
Zheng, Junteng. “The Making of Time in International Legal Discourse.” PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2025.
Access:
An abstract of the PhD thesis is available on this page of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s repository. As the thesis itself is embargoed until June 2028, please contact Dr Zheng for access.
Banner image: Burdun Iliya/Shutterstock.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.