Biography

Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the politics and foreign policy of the United States at Leiden University.  From 2023 – 27 he will be the principal investigator on “American foreign policy and liberalism”, a research project funded by a nearly €1m grant from the Dutch Research Council. He also writes regularly for international media, focusing on American national politics and foreign policy. He writes regularly for The Guardian and has also written in many other outlets, including The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and World Politics Review.

The research project “American foreign policy and liberalism” aims to challenge the idea that the United States set out after World War II to build an international order based on liberal principles. Instead, it explores the various illiberal ideologies which also influenced the U.S. approach to international order, as well as the contradictions of liberalism itself.

Andrew received his graduate training at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London before receiving his PhD from the latter institution in 2015.  He was then a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School.  Andrew also previously served as a Teaching Fellow at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, the UK military’s premier institution of higher education, and as a British civil servant in the Cabinet Office.

Andrew is a strong advocate of academic engagement in the public sphere, and his writing has appeared in media outlets on every continent.