Welcome! I am a political scientist studying international order, sovereignty, and grand strategy. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. I received my Ph.D. from Princeton’s Department of Politics in 2025.

My book project examines internationalized territories as a distinct form of political authority, drawing on 23 cases of international rule since 1815. A paper drawn from this project asks why some contested territories are internationalized while others are not, utilizing a comparative case study of the internationalization of Vienna’s city center in 1945, the partition of Berlin, and Khrushchev's 1960 proposal to internationalize Berlin. In related work, I develop a decisionist account of “private sovereignty,” pushing back against the functionalist conception of sovereignty prevalent in the discipline.

A second strand of my research examines the history of ideas in American grand strategy. I am currently tracing the Trotskyist origins of neoconservatism through James Burnham's influence on American foreign policy. I am also interested more broadly in continuities between Cold War strategy and 21st-century policy, including alternative theories of a post-liberal international order.

Beyond the academy, I lecture regularly at the U.S. Department of State and often write for public audiences on history and foreign policy.

My c.v. can be viewed here. Contact me at penatzer@princeton.edu.