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Overview

Dr Dennis Schmidt

Assistant Professor in International Relations


Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Assistant Professor in International Relations in the School of Government and International Affairs+44 (0) 191 33 45653

Biography

Dennis R. Schmidt is an Assistant Professor in International Relations. Prior to joining Durham, he was a Senior Lecturer at Swansea University. He has held fellowships and visiting posts at George Washington University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Tübingen.

Interested in the relationship between ethics, politics, and law at the global level, Dennis' work explores international order and global governance in theory and practice. He is interested in how international norms and institutions shape, and are shaped by, changing ideas and patterns of global order, and how these changes affect the constitution and morality of global governance. He is currently working on a book-length English School study of the role international law plays in maintaining and transforming global order, with a specific focus on decoloniality, cultural diversity, and practices of inclusion and exclusion.

Dennis has published on international norms and institutions, pluralism and global order, and the normative foundations of international law in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, and Review of International Studies. He currently serves as the program chair for the ISA English School section. 

Beyond academia, he has been a regular contributor to various blogs and media outlets, including The ConversationJust SecurityZeit Online, and The Washington Post (The Monkey Cage blog).

Research interests

  • Politics and ethics of international law
  • Global order
  • International norms and institutions
  • International Relations theory
  • International criminal justice

Esteem Indicators

  • 2000: 2020-2022 ISA Program Chair for the English School Section:
  • 2000: 2018/2019 Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for International Studies:
  • 2000: 2015 Visiting Scholar at George Washington University:
  • 2000: 2015 ISA International Law Section Best Paper Award:
  • 2000: 2024/2025 Joachim Herz Fellow / Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study:

Publications

Book review

Chapter in book

Journal Article