A full understanding of the development and re-production of IPE is only possible with an appreciation of its disciplinary politics. This institutionalises four aspects of academic inquiry: (a) what is considered admissible work in the field, (b) how work should be conducted and where it should be published (c) where the field’s legitimate boundaries are, and (d) ‘external relations’ with cognate disciplines. Academic gatekeepers in positions of disciplinary influence shape perceptions about appropriate conduct within the field, what constitutes its core, and what lies outside its realm. Disciplinary political definitions of the field’s nature and limits are manifest in the writing of texts introducing students to IPE. Particularly important are origin stories, which are always partly about directing and coordinating scholarly activity in the present and for the future. Disciplinary history entails forgetting certain events, scholars and works that do not fit the prevailing chronology, marginalising or excluding some topics, debates and questions from the core of the field. We evidence our claims about the boundary work done in narrating IPE’s origins through bibliometric mapping and network analysis of IPE citation patterns and practices. We find that IPE is a narrower, more blinkered field than it typically presents itself to be.