Alexander Wendt
Alexander Wendt Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security The Ohio State University
Alexander Wendt is Ralph D. Mershon Professor of International Security and professor of political science at The Ohio State University. His areas of expertise include the philosophy of social science and social theory, international relations theory, global governance, and international security.
Wendt is interested in philosophical aspects of social science, with special reference to international relations. He is the author of Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, 1999), which in 2006 received the International Studies Association award for “Best Book of the Decade” and has been translated into more than 10 languages. In the 2013 TRIP survey of 1,400 International Relations scholars he was named as the most influential scholar in the field over the past 20 years.
Wendt’s latest book is Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which proposes a quantum physical basis for consciousness and its place in the natural world, and explores the implications of this perspective for the social sciences. Wendt’s argument provides a philosophical basis for human agency through free will, and for a holistic or ‘non-local’ vision of social life.
Recent publications also include New Systems Theories of World Politics, edited with Mathias Albert and Lars-Erik Cederman (Macmillan, 2010), based on a conference held at the Mershon Center in 2005. He has also published articles in International Organization, American Political Science Review, Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, International Security, and Politics and Society.
He is also co-editor of International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law and Philosophy (Cambridge), which he founded with Duncan Snidal to bring together scholarship from international relations theory, international legal theory, and international political theory.
Before coming to Ohio State in 2004, Wendt taught at Yale University, Dartmouth College, and University of Chicago.