Rate My Professor Brian Murphy

Brian Phillips Murphy is an associate professor of history at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark, where he joined the faculty in 2016 as part of the Department of History and Program in American Studies. He currently serves as director of the Honors College and chair of the Newark Faculty Council. Murphy earned an A.B. from Haverford College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of Virginia. Before Rutgers, he taught at Baruch College and the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York from 2008 to 2016. An award-winning teacher recognized by the Whiting Foundation, he has offered courses in early American history, economic history, and seminars on figures like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, as well as the history of New York City. His early professional experience includes journalism positions at Money magazine and George magazine, managing editor of PoliticsNJ.com, and contributions to publications such as BusinessWeek, the New York Times, Talking Points Memo, and Commonweal.

Murphy's research examines the political economy of the early American republic, with emphasis on state-directed economic development, banking, corporate chartering, infrastructure, transportation enterprises, and political entrepreneurship. His book Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) analyzes the origins of American capitalism through New York's business corporations and received the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's 2015 James Broussard Best First Book Prize. Other key publications include the article “ ‘A Very Convenient Instrument’: The Manhattan Company, Aaron Burr, and the Election of 1800” in the William and Mary Quarterly (2008). He has held distinguished fellowships, including the Steven M. Polan Fellowship in Constitutional Law and History at the Brennan Center for Justice (2024-2025), Helen and Robert Appel Fellowship in History and Technology at the New-York Historical Society (2023-2024), Fulbright-Mary Ball Washington Visiting Professorship in Ireland, Jefferson Scholars Foundation, International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, Gilder Lehrman Center, and McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Murphy directs projects documenting New Jersey's 1947 state constitutional convention with the Quill Project at Pembroke College, Oxford; co-directs the Mediterranean Displacements Project; and serves on the Board of Editors of the Papers of Gouverneur Morris. His scholarship influences discussions on historical state formation, institutional corruption, and constitutional studies.