Ian Hurd is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.  His research is on the interaction between states and international rules, norms, and laws.  He has projects in international relations theory, international law, research methods, and international organizations. 

His current project is about the law and politics of rule-violation in the international system.

He also has recent articles on the law of humanitarian intervention, changing practices of diplomacy, the international whaling regime, and IR methodology.  These reflects interests in both the theory and the practice of international politics.

His most recent book is International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which examines the legal foundations of the main international organizations in the world today.

His book After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton University Press, 2007) won the Myres McDougal Prize of the Policy Sciences Association and the Chadwick Alger Prize of the International Studies Association.

Past work has been on the International Criminal Court treaty, Security Council reform at the United Nations, the concept of legitimacy in international relations, labor standards and international criminal law, as well as the constructivist school of thought in IR theory.

Ian Hurd is on the editorial boards of Ethics and International Affairs and the Journal of International Organization Studies and is an affiliated scholar at the Center on Law and Globalization at the University of Illinois and the American Bar Foundation.

He has been a visitor at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, Sciences Po in Paris, and the WZB Social Science Research Center in Berlin.  He has taught at the European Inter-University Center Venice School of Human Rights and the University of Wisconsin - Madison.