Erez ManelaI am a professor of history at Harvard University, where I teach the history of the United States in the world and modern international history. I also direct Graduate Student Programs at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, co-chair the long-running Harvard International and Global History Seminar (HIGHS) and co-edit a book series on Global and International History at Cambridge University Press.

For updates on events and publications of interest, follow me at: https://twitter.com/erezmanela

About My Research

I have worked on a number of areas in 20th century international history. My current research centers on how ideas about race--including beliefs about racial hierarchy, demands for racial equality, and fears of "race war"--shaped international order in the twentieth century, particularly the postwar orders constructed after world war. A recent essay in this vein, titled "Visions of One World," was published in Vol. III of The Cambridge History of America and the World (2022). 

I have published extensively on World War I and particularly its global aftermath. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007) argued that U.S. attempts to recast international order in the wake of World War I helped spark uprisings across the colonial world that profoundly shaped subsequent histories. Empires at War, 1911-1923 (2014), co-edited with Robert Gerwarth, reframed the Great War as a global war of empires. An updated reflection on this topic, "Asia in the Global 1919", was recently published in the Journal of Asian Studies. This work also led to a broader interest in the global history of anticolonial nationalism, which has recently yielded a collaborative volume on The Anticolonial Transnational: Imaginaries, Mobilities, and Networks in the Struggle against Empire (2023)

Another line of research centered on the history of the World Health Organization's global smallpox eradication program in the 1960s and '70s and what it tells us about the intersection of superpower relations, international development, and international organizations in that era. (TLDR: sometimes superpower competition can spur, rather than impede, international cooperation). In this context I also co-edited (and contributed to) two anthologies: The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (2010) and The Development Century: A Global History (2018).

Finally, I have longstanding interests in conceptual, methodological, and historiographical questions in international history, most recently explored in an essay on "International Society as a Historical Subject" (2020). An earlier state-of-the-field essay on the history of the United States in the world in American History Now (2011) can be read here. For readers of Chinese, an interview on the "Method and Practice of International History" (国际史的方法与实践) is here.

The links above will take you to my "official" bio, selected publications (some with links to full text), and teaching, advising, and contact information. You may also be interested in international and global history at Harvard