School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

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Maria Ryan

Associate Professor in American History, Faculty of Arts

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Expertise Summary

My research interests are broadly in the field of post-Cold War US foreign policy, in particular the development of neoconservatism; intellectuals and foreign policy; humanitarian interventionism; the Bush administration and the 'Global War on Terror'; as well as the history of the CIA. My second monograph, Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror on the Periphery was published by Stanford University Press in late 2019. This book examines the smaller or 'peripheral' fronts of the U.S 'war on terror' in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, and Georgia and the Caspian Sea region, as well as the development and application of 'irregular warfare' techniques in these regions. The emphasis on 'irregular' tactics was part of a broader project described by the Pentagon as "full spectrum dominance" - dominance across the entire spectrum of warfare, from conventional inter-state war through to non-traditional 'irregular' forms of conflict.

My first monograph, Neoconservatism and the New American Century was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010. A collection of essays, co-edited with my colleague Bevan Sewell, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2017 as Foreign Policy at the Periphery: The Shifting Margins of U.S. International Relations Since World War II.

I am currently working on a British Academy-funded project about the US-China 'tech war'.

I am a regular contributor to The Conversation

From 2019-21, I was on secondment to the Foreign Office as a Senior US Research Analyst.

I am happy to supervise post-graduate students who are interested in any aspects of post-Cold War US foreign policy.

School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

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Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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