I'm a Fellow (Senior Lecturer) in the Department of International Relations, at Australian National University. I have a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto, and am a former postdoc at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. I study the history of international thought and the history of international order.

Much of my research focuses on the social and cultural aspects of international hierarchies—how they are legitimized, enforced, and resisted. My new book, The Counterinsurgent Imagination, is a long-run intellectual history of counterrevolutionary war, from the 17th century to the present. It examines military manuals, in their historical context, as political projects for the production of conservative, high modern utopias. Much of my other work, broadly in IR theory, concerns the role of legitimation strategies in shaping international hierarchies, with a historical emphasis on Inner and East Asia. In the history of international thought, I have published on Hegel, Hobbes, and the American IR theorist Kenneth Waltz.

My work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly (again), the Review of International Studies, International Theory, the Journal of Global Security Studies, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Social Science History, and Central Asian Survey, as well as with co-authors in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Studies, International Theory, International Studies Review, the European Journal of International Security, and other journals.

You can find me on Twitter, Google Scholar, and Academia.edu.