Matthew Frakes

Matthew Frakes

Dissertation

Matthew Frakes graduated from the Columbia–LSE dual degree program in 2017 after completing his thesis entitled “A Breach in the Special Relationship? Reagan, Thatcher, and the American Invasion of Grenada, 1983.” His research took him from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to the British National Archives and Cambridge University’s Churchill Archives Centre.

After graduating from Columbia and LSE, Matt earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Virginia, where he completed his dissertation entitled “Rogue States: The Making of America’s Global War on Terror, 1980–1994.” This project, which he is currently working to publish as a book, examines the evolution of U.S. national security strategy during the shift from the Cold War to the post–Cold War world. His research traces how America and its allies sought to combat the emerging threats of rogue states, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction from the early Reagan years to the aftermath of the Gulf War, laying the groundwork for the War on Terror after 9/11.

Matt is currently an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.