Jan is completing his PhD in history at New College, Oxford. In 2017-18 he is a Smith Richardson Predoctoral Fellow at International Security Studies (ISS), Yale University. He is also a member of the Research School on Peace and Conflict, Oslo. He has recently published articles in the Review of International Studies, History Compass, and The International History Review. He was an organiser of the conference ‘Rethinking the World Order: International Law and International Relations at the end of the First World War’ (European Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford, 2017)
Jan is interested in the history of International Relations, foreign policy, and democracy as well as various forms of internationalism. His research explores the formation of International Relations (IR) during the first half of the twentieth century, when scholars began to study international politics and society as part of an academic discipline. In particular, it focuses on the wide range of actors involved in this history—scholars and practitioners, men and women, English-speaking and from elsewhere. Jan’s doctoral thesis argues that early IR was shaped by the interaction between studying and making international politics, rather than by strictly theoretical debates. His research seeks to reconsider the disciplinary history of a social science, but also to open up a debate about the contingency of political theory and practice.