Introducing: Andrew Gawthorpe
Andrew Gawthorpe recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in Contemporary Military History and Security Studies.
I am a Lecturer in Contemporary Military History and Security Studies, teaching in both the History and International Relations programmes here at Leiden. I grew up in Yorkshire, England and was interested in history and international politics from a young age. In 2003 I went to the University of Cambridge to study History and eventually obtained a BA and MPhil in this field. I got my PhD in the field of Defence Studies (War Studies) from King's College London in 2015. I was then a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School for a year.
I have been working on the Vietnam War for a number of years. As well as a forthcoming book on this topic, I have also published five articles on it, ranging from an analysis of the impact that the end of the war had on international relations through to a piece on Vietnam War cinema. My book, which will be published by Cornell University Press, is an analysis of U.S. nation-building efforts at the peak of the war. It is designed to appeal to historians of U.S. foreign policy and security policy in the 1960s and also to scholars and practitioners of contemporary nation-building and counterinsurgency warfare.
I think I will take a break from the Vietnam War after this book! Next I am planning to analyze nation-building from a more theoretical perspective, and to pursue a project on the relationship between culture and warfare.
Outside of academia, I also worked as a journalist for a number of years, and as a civil servant in the British Cabinet Office. I believe historians can add a lot to public debate and should not be shy about doing so, and so I publish in a range of newspapers and magazines across the world.