Benjamin Mueser

Benjamin Mueser is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard College. He was previously a Core Lecturer at Columbia University, and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He is a political theorist and international relations scholar working on the historical and normative foundations of states and the territorial order, with interests in the history of international political thought, state formation, and territorial rights. 

His first book, The Foundations of Modern Territory (forthcoming 2027 with OUP), examines the development and contradictions of the idea of a territorial nation-state in early international law. His work focuses on how law and political philosophy constructs the relationship between people and the land they occupy as a central problem in the history of political ideas. 

His writing has appeared in Political Theory, History of European Ideas, International Studies Review, Global Intellectual History, History of Political Thought, and The Cambridge Review of International Affairs. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University.