For his undergraduate, Jan studied philosophy and economics in Bayreuth, Germany, focusing on questions of economic development and international justice. At Columbia and LSE, he took courses in 20th century economic and political history, writing his thesis on the International Studies Conference, 1928–1939, the first global conference for International Relations (IR) scholars. He went on to Oxford to write a doctoral dissertation on the history of IR as an academic discipline, followed by post-doc fellowships at Yale and Université libre de Bruxelles and, from 2019 to 2022, a lectureship at Helmut-Schmidt-Universität in Hamburg, Germany. His book, The Architects of International Relations, came out with Cambridge University Press in 2022. Since 2023, he works at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin.
