Research
Research Field
My main area of expertise is in American foreign policy and in British foreign policy and Anglo-American relations since the First World War.
The Cold War is a major focus of my research. Allied to this is an interest in the institutions of diplomacy and diplomats.
International finance is a particular focus of my most recent work. My latest book is British Financial Diplomacy with North America 1944-1946: the Diary of Frederic Harmer and the Washington Reports of Robert Brand (Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2021). It is a scholarly edition of the diary of Sir Frederic Harmer, the British Treasury official who accompanied John Maynard Keynes during his negotiations with the United States for a postwar loan in 1945; and the reports of Robert Brand, UK Treasury Representative in Washington during these talks and the financial discussions with Canada in 1945-1946. Research for the book was supported by a Carnevali Grant from the Economic History Society. Building on the work in this book, I am now engaged on a new project, Robert Brand and International Finance, for which I was awarded a Sassoon Visiting Fellowship at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
I continue work on a major long-term project, a monograph on the American Secretary of State, which examines the role of the secretary, and in particular the relations between secretary and president, in the formation and implementation of US foreign policy since the First World War. To pursue this project I have obtained grants from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Eisenhower Foundation, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the Gerald R. Ford Library institute, and the George H. W. Bush Library.
A third project explores the history of the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professorship of American History at the University of Oxford.
Research Grants
Sassoon Visiting Fellow, Bodleian Library, Oxford
O'Donnell Grant, George H. W. Bush Library
Carnevali Research Grant, Economic History Society
Eisenhower Foundation
Harry S. Truman Library Institute
Herbert Hoover Presidential Foundation,
Scouloudi Historical Award
Gerald R. Ford Library Institute
British Academy Small Research Grant
Princeton University Library
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Library Institute
Research Supervision
I welcome inquiries from students wishing to pursue an MRes or PhD degree in American foreign policy