Dr Raphael Schäfer, MJur (Oxon), FRHistS, FRSA

Raphael is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a Research and Teaching Associate at Justus Liebig University Giessen. He serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the History of International Law and hosts the podcast “Voices of JHIL”, which brings leading scholars into conversation on foundational questions of international legal history. His scholarship focuses on general public international law, with a particular emphasis on its history and theory, as well as on constitutional law.

During his stay at Clare Hall (hosted by Professor David Ibbetson), in combination with a visiting fellowship at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (hosted by Professor Surabhi Ranganathan), he is completing the manuscript of his forthcoming monograph, Keeping the Balance: The Rise and Fall of the European International Order, 1814–1853. The book, accepted for publication with Cambridge University Press, offers the first systematic doctrinal reconstruction of the post-Vienna order as a coherent international legal system until its decline at the Crimean War. It examines how principles such as hierarchy between states, balance of power, and considerations of humanity structured the nineteenth-century European order and continue to inform contemporary debates on international governance.

Raphael’s teaching experience spans both the German and British higher education systems. He has taught public international law as well as public law at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Giessen, London, and Oxford. He holds a PhD from the University of Heidelberg and an MJur from the University of Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), he regularly engages with professional and general audiences.