Craig N. Murphy is M. Margaret Ball Professor of International Relations at Wellesley College. He previously served as the president of the International Studies Association (2000–01) and as the chair of the Academic Council on the UN System (2002–04). He was one of two founding editors of the international public policy journal Global Governance, which received the 1996 award of the American Association of Publishers for the best new journal in the social sciences, management, and the humanities.
Professor Murphy did his undergraduate work at Grinnell College (BA 1974). He was an InterFuture Scholar in Ghana and the United Kingdom and received his PhD in political science from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill in 1980.
After joining the Wellesley faculty in 1981, Murphy served as co-director of the Peace Studies program from 1987–89, a role he filled again from 2006-09. He has co-directed the college’s International Relations Program (1990–2000) and served as chair of the Political Science Department (1999–2002) and as the Director of the Social Sciences (2002–04). Before coming to Wellesley, Murphy was an instructor at Wesleyan and an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins. He later served as a part-time visiting professor in Harvard’s Government Department (1990) and at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies (1998–2002). He worked for the United Nations Development Programme from 2004–06 and was a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study in 2007–08.
His most recent books include The International Organization for Standardization: Global Governance through Voluntary Consensus (Routledge 2009), written with his wife, JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and Deputy Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way? (Cambridge University Press 2006), which received the International Studies Association’s 2007 prize for the best book in the field of international organization. Another major study, International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850 (Polity Press and Oxford University Press 1994), explores the role of intergovernmental organizations in the emergence of today’s global economy.
Murphy is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six other books and of over 50 articles or chapters on international organization, international political economy, and international relations theory. His current research includes the ongoing project with his wife, which aims to explain the impact on the global economy of voluntary consensus standard setting since the first applications of this nongovernmental, engineering-inspired process in the mid-19th century. He is also working on a general theoretical study of international relations viewed through the lens of global inequalities.
At Wellesley, Murphy regularly teaches courses on international relations, international political economy, global governance, and African politics. He has overseen post-doctoral students and served on doctoral committees in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and has served on visiting committees at a number of institutions including Haverford, Macalester, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Rice, Tufts, and Williams.
Craig and JoAnne live in Watertown, Massachusetts, and have a cabin in Salisbury Cove, Maine. They are active members of the Newton, Massachusetts West Suburban YMCA and of a Maine running club, Eden Athletics. They also share interests in Americana music and the international arts and crafts movements of the early 20th century.
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Profile last updated: 8/09