Ian Hurd is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University. His research on international law and politics combines contemporary global affairs with attention to the conceptual frames that serve to make sense of the world. is research on international law and politics combines contemporary global affairs with attention to the conceptual frames that serve to make sense of the world.

His latest book, How to Do Things With International Law (Princeton 2017), examines the ideology of the rule of law in international affairs. His earlier work on the UN Security Council includes the prize-winning After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the UN Security Council (Princeton 2007). He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of International Organizations (Oxford 2017) and The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority (Routledge 2008). His widely used textbook on the law and politics of global governance, called International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice is going into its fourth edition in 2020 (Cambridge).

He has been chair of the International Organization section at ISA and a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, WZB-Berlin, Sciences Po in Paris, and elsewhere. He is a frequent contributor to media on current events and his commentary has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and other outlets. He is currently writing a biography of the idea of the liberal world order.