THOMAS J.
BIERSTEKER is the Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Graduate
Institute, Geneva and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He
previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California,
and Brown University, where he directed the Watson Institute for International
Studies from 1994 until 2006
Author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, his
next book, co-edited with Oliver Westerwinter and Kenneth Abbott is Informal
Governance in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
2022). He is also co-editor of Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and
Effectiveness of UN Action (Cambridge,
2016), Countering
the Financing of Global Terrorism (Routledge, 2008), International Law and International Relations:
Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006), The Emergence of Private
Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2002), and State Sovereignty
as Social Construct (Cambridge 1996).
His research focuses primarily on international relations, global
governance, and international sanctions. In addition to providing annual sanctions
training for incoming members of the UN Security Council, he is the principal
developer of SanctionsApp, an interactive tool for the design and analysis of
UN targeted sanctions. His recent research activities include work with the UN and
Member States on the reform of UN targeted sanctions.
He has provided briefings on his research to the UN Security
Council (in an Arria Formula meeting), the European Union, and the governments
of Switzerland, the US, Norway, Korea, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Canada, the
UK, Armenia, Slovenia, and Jamaica. During the past seven years, he has
consulted and drafted policy reports for the UN University’s Centre for Policy
Research, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, Global Affairs
Canada, the Carter Center, the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, swisspeace,
Intermediate, Humanitarian Dialogue, and the European Union’s Institute for
Security Studies.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously
served as the chair of the Social Science Research Council’s Global Security
and Cooperation Committee, and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s
Global Futures Council on the Korean Peninsula.
He received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and his B.A. from the University of Chicago. A recipient of the
Helen Dwight Reid Dissertation award from the American Political Science
Association, he was awarded the University of Chicago’s Professional Achievement
Award in 2020.