Joseph MacKay is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. He works on the history of international theory and the history of international ordering. His 2023 book, The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History, is a long-run, critical intellectual history of counter-revolutionary war. His current book project looks at the modern, western history of reactionary international thought. Some of his work deals with historical international structures, hierarchies, and relationalities, in East and Inner Asia.