Faculty

Quentin Bruneau is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College.

His research focuses on two broad areas. The first is international political economy, and particularly the historical development of international finance from the nineteenth century to the present day. His second area of interest is the history and theory of international relations.

His first book, States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New (Columbia University Press, 2023), explores the transformation of sovereign lending from the early nineteenth century to the present day. It was awarded the Francesco Guicciardini Prize (2025) for Best Book in Historical International Relations by the International Studies Association (ISA).

Before coming to New York, he obtained a D.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford (2016), as well as an M.Phil. (2012) from the same institution, and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the Université de Montréal (2010).

D.Phil. International Relations, University of Oxford, 2016.

M.Phil. International Relations, University of Oxford, 2012.

B.Sc. Political Science, Université de Montréal, 2010.  

Book

States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2023).

• Awarded the Francesco Guicciardini Prize (2025) for Best Book in Historical International Relations by the International Studies Association (ISA).
• Finalist for the 2023 British International Studies Association (BISA) Book Prize for best book published in the field of International Political Economy
• Interviews, podcasts, etc: New Books Network, Wohlstand für Alle (video version), Public Seminar.
• Reviews: Survival, H-Diplo, Finance & Society, International Affairs
• Book forum in Cambridge Review of International Affairs 39, no. 3 (2026).

Articles

Forum on Rating Politics: The Political Thought of Sovereign Raters. Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium (forthcoming).

Three Histories of the System of States, International Politics, forthcoming (with Claire Vergerio).

Reply to reviewers, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 39, no. 3 (2026), 507-515. (Forum on States and the Masters of Capital for the ISA 2025 Francesco Guicciardini Prize).

Rethinking International Order in Early Modern Europe: Evidence from Courtly Ceremonial, International Organization 77, no. 4 (2023), 691-720.

In the Club: How and Why Central Bankers Created a Hierarchy of Sovereign Borrowers, ca. 1988-2007, Review of International Political Economy 30, no. 1 (2023), 153-175.

Converging Paths: Bounded Rationality, Practice Theory and the Study of Change in Historical International Relations, International Theory 14, no. 1 (2022), 88-114.

Book Chapters

The Long Nineteenth Century, in The Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations, edited by Mlada Bukovansky, Edward Keene, Maja Spanu, and Christian Reus-Smit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 454-468.

Constructivism: History and Systemic Change, in Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations, edited by Benjamin de Carvalho, Julia Costa-Lopez, and Halvard Leira (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 80-89. 

Book Reviews

Bartelson’s translatio imperii: Becoming International, by Jens Bartelson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 281 pp., £26.99. Global Intellectual History (forthcoming).

Book Review: Eric Helleiner, The Contested World Economy: The Deep and Global Roots of International Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), CBHA/ACHA The Prospectus, July 2024.

Outreach

Between capitalism and the states-system, Phenomenal World, 22 November 2025.

• Spanish translation: Entre el capitalismo y el sistema de estados, Phenomenal World, 22 November 2025.

Gaza, Israël et le monopole étatique de la guerre, Le Grand Continent, 23 September 2024.

• Spanish translation: Gaza, Israel y el monopolio estatal de la guerra, El Grand Continent, 24 September 2024.

Only States Can Wage War and Why It Matters, Institute of Art and Ideas, 20 August 2024.

Why we're not re-living the interwar years -- we're back in the 19th century, Public Seminar, 20 January 2017.