Alexander Wendt is Mershon Professor of International Security and Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in political science in 1989, and before coming to Ohio State in 2004 he taught at Yale University, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago.
In his research Wendt is interested in philosophical aspects of social science, with special reference to international relations. He is the author of Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge UP, 1999), which in 2006 received the International Studies Association award for “Best Book of the Decade.” In the 2017 TRIP survey of 1400 international relations scholars, Wendt was named the most influential scholar in the field over the preceding 20 years.
Wendt’s second book, Quantum Mind and Social Science (Cambridge UP, 2015) proposes a quantum physical basis for consciousness and its place in the natural world, and explores the implications of this hypothesis for the social sciences. He is currently finishing his third book, The Last Humans: UFOs and National Security, which is forthcoming from Oxford UP in October 2026.