About Ted Hopf
Born in 1959, Ted Hopf is a leading academic and a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. His main fields of interest are international relations theory, qualitative research methods, and identity, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the former Soviet space.
His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, European Journal of International Relations, International Organization, Review of International Studies, Security Studies, and International Security.
His most recent book, Making Identity Count: Building a Great Power National Identity Database, co-edited with Bentley Allan, begins the construction of a large inter-subjective national identity database for all great powers since 1810.
Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958 (Oxford 2012), won the 2013 American Political Science Association Robert Jervis-Paul Schroeder Award for ‘Best Book in International Relations and History.’ He also received the 2013 Marshall D. Shulman Award, presented by the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies for the best book published that year on the international politics of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe.
His most recent article, “The Distribution of identity and the Future of International Order: China’s Hegemonic Prospects,” with Bentley Allan and Srdjan Vucetic, published in International Organization, received the Albert O. Hirschman (Albie) Award at the Washington Post as one of the ‘Top Ten Best Works on Political Economy’ in 2018.
He is also a co-editor with Alina Drieschova and Christian Bueger for Conceptualizing International Practices (Cambridge 2021).
Research
A Constructivist History Of Krushchev’s Cold War, (1958-1964)
While a research fellow at the University of Helsinki Collegium, Hopf will work on the next installment of Reconstructing the Cold war, a series of books that tell the story of Soviet foreign relations from 1945-1991 from the perspective of the Soviet national identity and its’ identity relations with the rest of the world. The current volume concentrates on the Krushchev period, with a focus on relations with China, the US, the developing world, and Eastern Europe.
Books
Ted Hopf has authorized or co-edited eight books, including three solo-authored works.
Conceptualizing International Practices is co-edited with Alena Drieschova and Christian Bueger. It will be published in 2021 by the Cambridge University Press. The book gathers many prime contributors to the practice turn in IR theory and includes a critical overview by Hopf.
Making Identity Count, co-edited with Bentley Allan (Oxford 2016), introduces the Making Identity Count project. It includes the creation of a database of great power national identities from 1810-2020, using interpretivist discourse analysis to recover elite and mass understandings of their countries’ national identities. This book provides results for 2010.
Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958 (Oxford University Press 2012) is the first volume from a series of constructivist accounts of Soviet foreign relations in the Cold War. It covers Stalin’s last years in power and the early years post his death – a period in which Khrushchev consolidates his primacy.
Teaching
Ted Hopf has supervised more than 40 P.hD. dissertations and taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses over the years, some of which include:
- Social Theory and International Relations
- Introduction to Qualitative Methods
- The psychology and Politics of Identity
- Introduction to IR Theory
- Food Politics
- The Rise of China and IR Theory