In this episode, host Polly speaks with Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (New York University), winner of this year’s EISA Best Dissertation Award for his dissertation Architects of the Better World: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of International Order (1919 - 1998), which he is currently developing into a monograph. Daniel’s research examines how the metaphorical use of architectural language in international law discussions often obscures the real, material spaces where international law is shaped, challenged, and debated. He argues that that the metaphorical language of architecture in international law - epitomised by Truman’s call for “architects of the better world” - conceals the material realities of where international order is produced, and instead traces the emergence of a concrete “international parliamentary complex” that reshaped global governance from 1919 to 1998.
Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín is a Hauser/Remarque Global Fellow in International Law and European History at New York University. He earned his PhD in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute and is the managing editor of the Journal of the History of International Law. Following his fellowship at NYU, he will join the University of Vienna as a postdoctoral researcher, supported by a SNSF two-year postdoctoral mobility grant, to pursue his lecturing qualification in Legal and Constitutional History.

Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín

EISA Best Dissertation Award 2025

Quiroga Villamarín, D. R. (2023). “Suitable Palaces”: Navigating Layers of World Ordering at the Centre William Rappard (1923–2013). Architectural Theory Review, 27(1), 19–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2231574

Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2020). Beyond Texts? Towards a Material Turn in the Theory and History of International Law. Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international, 23(3), 466-500. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340172