Barbara Koremenos

Barbara Koremenos received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her research — the first such winner to study international relations and law. She focuses on the tens of thousands of international agreements that states negotiate, conclude, sign, and implement. In her award-winning book, The Continent of International Law: Explaining Agreement Design (Cambridge University Press 2016), Koremenos argues that the detailed design provisions of such agreements matter for phenomena that scholars, policymakers, and the public care about: When and how international cooperation occurs and is maintained. Koremenos develops hypotheses regarding how cooperation problems like incentives to cheat can be confronted and moderated through law’s detailed design provisions. Empirically, she exploits her data set composed of a random sample of international agreements in economics, environment, human rights and security. She has given seminars in the United States, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. She is currently serving on her second National Academies of Sciences panel, making policy recommendations based on her research.