Ian Hurd is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University. His most recent work is How to Do Things with International Law, an examination of the political uses of international law. His research and teaching is on international law and politics in theory and in practice, and political science research methods. His earlier book on the power of legitimacy and international authority in the United Nations, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the UN Security Council, won the Chadwick Alger Prize at ISA and the of the Myres McDougal award from Policy Sciences Association. He is the author of a leading textbook for students of international organizations and global governance, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (4th edition, 2020).

Hie is writing book on the idea of world order in historical, scientific, and policy discourse for Yale University Press.

He has been a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, WZB in Berlin, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, EHESS in Paris, and elsewhere.