Wesley Widmaier Jr

Professor Wesley Widmaier Jr is a faculty member in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the interplay of wars, crises, and systemic stability/instability across International Political Economy and International Security. He has held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and served as lead editor of the Review of International Political Economy.

Research interests include historical development of economic ideas, institutional resilience, and the paradoxical effects of intellectual stability on economic crises. His work spans case studies from the gold standard era to contemporary central banking systems, and examines policy overconfidence's role in populist backlash.

Key contributions include a book on economic ideas' cyclical influence (Cambridge UP, 2016) and analysis of rhetorical path dependence in policy failures. Current projects explore Australia's foreign policy challenges and crisis dynamics in global political economy.

He has authored 15+ peer-reviewed articles in top journals like Review of International Political Economy, International Studies Quarterly, and Millennium. Research projects include 'Explaining Crises: Ideas, Instability and Change from Gold Standard to GFC' (2020–2025) and 'Political Economy in an Age of Crises' (2023–2024).