Matthias Staisch is Associate Teaching Professor of Political Science at Rice University. He studies how multilateral institutions differ from their imperial predecessors in shaping great power politics and global inequalities. He also works on the sociology of International Relations, in particular IR's recent turn to network theory and rediscovery of race as an organizing principle.

Before he joined Rice, Prof. Staisch was Associate Director and Associate Senior Instructional Professor in the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago. A dual German-US citizen, he earned a PhD in Political Science at the University of Chicago and a BA/MA in Political Science and Modern History at the Universität Tübingen.