I am a scholar whose research focuses on the modern and contemporary United States. Though a historian by training, my work engages with insights from other disciplines, particularly international relations and American politics. I am currently the principal investigator on the NWO Vidi-funded project "American foreign policy and liberalism". This project challenges the notion of an American-created "liberal international order" by investigating how the American approach to international order has been shaped by illiberal ideologies, such as those underpinning racism at home or imperialism abroad. I am also currently writing a U.S. politics textbook which problematizes many assumptions about American democracy and liberalism through a critical historical lens. I write widely for popular media as well as academic publications and host a podcast about American politics, foreign policy and culture called America Explained. I previously held a research fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, a teaching fellowship at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, and a civil service appointment in the British Cabinet Office.

More information about Andrew Gawthorpe

Research

I am a scholar who focuses on the foreign policy and politics of the modern and contemporary United States. While my work is mainly historical in nature, it is driven by a fascination with how the contemporary is shaped by the past. I engage frequently with insights from nearby disciplines such as international relations and American politics, publishing in the journals of a variety of disciplines.

I am currently the principal investigator on the NWO Vidi-funded project "American foreign policy and liberalism". This project challenges the notion of an American-created "liberal international order" by investigating how the American approach to international order has been shaped by illiberal ideologies, such as those underpinning racism at home or imperialism abroad.

Alongside this, I am writing a BA-level U.S. politics textbook with Sage Publishing. It provides an introduction to contemporary U.S. politics through the lens of contestation about identities and narratives. The textbook engages deeply with history in order to place America's current polarization and democratic backsliding in context and to complicate notions that the U.S. has long enjoyed a hegemonic liberal political culture.

Previously, I have published extensively on America's engagement in overseas counterinsurgency and nation-building, including a book on the Vietnam War, To Build as well as Destroy: The American Experience of Nation-Building in South Vietnam, available from Cornell University Press. My published articles have considered the war from a variety of angles, including as an episode in the history of international economic development.

My research has been published in International Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The International History Review, The Historical Journal, The Journal of Cold War Studies, The Journal of Strategic Studies, and Small Wars & Insurgencies.

I am a passionate teacher and public communicator. In 2019, I received the Institute for History’s biannual teaching prize, the Carla Musterd Award. I was also previously nominated twice for the teaching prize of the Faculty of Humanities. I consider public communication to be a vital part of a scholar’s role and frequently publish opinion pieces and op-eds. My writing has been published on every continent, including in The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets.  I also host a podcast called America Explained which explores topics in American politics and foreign policy through interviews and reporting.

Prior to arriving at Leiden, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Harvard Kennedy School, a Teaching Fellow at the UK Defence Academy, and a civil servant in the British Cabinet Office. I received my graduate training at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London.
 

Curriculum vitae

2023 - present: Dutch Research Council NWO Vidi principal investigator, 'The United States, Illiberalism, and International Order, 1941 - 2003'

2022 - present: University Lecturer 1, Institute for History, Leiden University.

2016 - 2022: University Lecturer 2, Institute for History, Leiden University.

2015 - 2016: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Belfer Center, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

2013 - 2015: Teaching Fellow, Defence Studies Department, King's College London.

2015: PhD, King's College London.

2007: M.Phil, Historical Studies, Cambridge University.

2006: BA, History, Cambridge University.
 

Key publications

The Liberal Order Myth: American Liberalism and the Postwar World (in preparation as part of Vidi grant project).

U.S. Politics, 1st ed. (Sage Publishing, forthcoming 2027).

To Build as well As Destroy: The American Experience of Nation-Building in South Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2018).

‘Civilizational Wilsonianism from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump‘, International Affairs 101, 1 (2025), pp. 177 – 94.

‘Counterinsurgency Comes Homes‘, Journal of Strategic Studies 46, 3 (2023), pp 741 – 8.

‘Taking US Foreign Policy for the Middle Class Seriously‘, The Washington Quarterly 45, 1 (2022), pp. 57 – 75.

‘Modernization, Agricultural Economics, and American Policy Towards Land Reform in South Vietnam‘, International History Review 44, 2 (2022), pp. 282 – 99.

‘Rural Government Advisors in South Vietnam and the U.S. War Effort, 1962 – 1973‘, Journal of Cold War Studies 23, 1 (2021).

‘Ken Burns, the Vietnam War, and the Purpose of History‘, Journal of Strategic Studies 43, 1 (2020).

‘The United States and the Vietnam War‘, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

‘Air America’ and ‘North American Union’, entries in Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2019).

‘CIMIC and Hybrid Threats: Lessons from East Asia‘, in Eugenio Cusumano and Marian Corbe (eds.), A Civil-Military Response to Hybrid Threats (2017, Springer), pp. 281 – 301.

‘All Counterinsurgency is Local: Counterinsurgency and Rebel Legitimacy‘, Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, 4/5 (2017), pp. 839 – 52.

‘“Mad Dog?”  Samuel Huntington and the Vietnam War‘, The Journal of Strategic Studies 41, 1-2 (2018), pp. 301 – 25.

‘Spies, Advisors and Grunts: Film Portrayals of Counterinsurgency in Vietnam‘, Small Wars & Insurgencies 26, 4 (2015), pp. 668 – 687 (with Jeffrey Michaels).

‘Agency and Structure in the Study of Nation-Building during the Vietnam War‘, The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 8, 4 (2014), pp. 387 – 394.

‘The Ford Administration and Security Policy in the Asia-Pacific after the Fall of Saigon‘, The Historical Journal 52, 3 (2009), pp. 697 – 716.

Activities