Christian Reus-Smit - Career

Career

Reus-Smit was educated in Australia and the United States, receiving his B.A. and M.A. from La Trobe University in Melbourne. His M.A. dissertation concerned Australian foreign and security policy under during the Fraser era. After completing his M.A. in the mid-1980s, he taught at La Trobe University. During the mid-1990s, Reus-Smit undertook his PhD at Cornell University, along with other emerging constructivist scholars such as Audie Klotz and Richard Price. His doctoral dissertation was co-chaired by Peter J. Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, which was later published as The Moral Purpose of the State in 1999.

Reus-Smit returned to teach in Australia in 1995 and held positions as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Monash University before taking up a position as Senior Fellow at the Australian National University in 2001, and was promoted to Professor in 2004. Reus-Smit served as Head of the Department of International Relations at the ANU from 2001 until 2010, and as Deputy Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) from 2006 to 2008. In September 2010 Reus-Smit moved to Florence to take up the Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute. Reus-Smit is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Reus-Smit's work is arguably considered less influential than other constructivist scholars, such as Thomas Risse, Emanuel Adler, Kathryn Sikkink, Marty Finnemore, and Alex Wendt, although generally his interventions in the field of IR are theoretically significant. His innovative analytical focus and highly imaginative, brilliant synthesis of ideas over a relatively brief period (he completed his PhD in 1996) distinguish his contribution to constructivism.