Nathan Grau received his B.A. in both History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, graduating magna cum laude from New York University in 2015. His undergraduate honors thesis, which was granted honors with distinction, was a comparative study of the employment of counterinsurgency strategy by Coalition Forces in Iraq and that of French forces during their war to retain sovereignty over Algeria between 1954 and 1962.
At Columbia and LSE his research focused onĀ France's development and execution of counter-revolutionary and political warfare throughout its colonial empire, focusing on the largely forgotten wars of decolonization fought in the jungles of Tonkin, the Sinai peninsula, and the streets of Algiers. He is fascinated by the challenges that the twenty-first century academy pose for military history, and he is eager to evolve alongside the discipline.