Staff profile

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 Conversation, Just Security, Zeit Online, and The Washington Post (The Monkey Cage blog).

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

• 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:

Book review

• Schmidt, D. R. (2021). International law and the politics of history. International Affairs, 98(3), https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac081
• Schmidt, D. R. (2015). Mediations on the role and rule of law

Chapter in book

• Schmidt, D. R. (2022). Global Power Shifts and International Law. In T. B. Knudsen, & C. Navari (Eds.), Power Transition in the Anarchical Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97711-5_8
• Schmidt, D. R. (2018). Institutionalising Morality: The UN Security Council and the Fundamental Norms of the International Legal Order. In T. B. Knudsen, & C. Navari (Eds.), International Organization in the Anarchical Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71622-0_5

Journal Article

• Schmidt, D. R., & Williams, J. (2023). The Normativity of Global Ordering Practices. International Studies Quarterly, 67(2), Article sqad021. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqad021
• Schmidt, D. R. (2021). Complexity in international society: theorising fragmentation and linkages in primary and secondary institutions. Complexity, governance & networks, 6(1), https://doi.org/10.20377/cgn-105
• Linsenmaier, T., Schmidt, D. R., & Spandler, K. (2021). On the meaning(s) of norms: Ambiguity and global governance in a post-hegemonic world. Review of International Studies, 47(4), https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210521000371
• Schmidt, D. R. (2020). Pluralism and international law in the English School. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 33(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2020.1785128
• Schmidt, D. R., & Trenta, L. (2018). Changes in the law of self-defence? Drones, imminence, and international norm dynamics. Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, 5(2), https://doi.org/10.1080/20531702.2018.1496706
• Schmidt, D. R. (2016). Peremptory Law, global order, and the normative boundaries of a pluralistic world. International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law and Philosophy, 8(2), 262-296. https://doi.org/10.1017/s175297191600004x