Welcome!
I am a Lecturer at American University and San Diego Mesa College. I am also a Visiting Scholar at the East Asia Center at UC Santa Barbara (AY 2026-27). I study historical international relations, international order, and international organizations and global governance. Specifically, my research seeks to understand how rule-conflicts in interactions between international governing arrangements are managed.
I am on the job market!
Drawing on published collections of primary sources and historiography in three languages, my book project examines European embassies to China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as encounters between distinct international orders. I argue that these system encounters played an important role in the constitution of historical international orders in East Asia and Europe and the differences between them. A stand-alone manuscript from this project, “Studying Historical International Orders Through System Encounters,” has been conditionally accepted at the Review of International Studies. My other works in progress focus on the Russo-Chinese treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) and the conditions under which institutional overlap in contemporary global governance generates new rules.
I received my Ph.D. in International Relations from American University’s School of International Service. Previously, I was a 2023-2024 US-Asia Grand Strategy Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California and a Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellow with the United States Institute of Peace. I earned an M.A. in International Affairs from AU SIS and a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in International Economics from the University of Tübingen, Germany. I also studied abroad at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Russia (2012).
As a first-generation college student, former international student, and parent, I am passionate about service and efforts to increase resources and support for students from historically marginalized backgrounds. I am a member of the Executive Board of ISA West and served as the Ph.D. Student Representative for my doctoral program during the 2023-24 academic year.
Please feel free to reach out at dengler[dot]frieder[at]gmail[dot]com.