Dr Andrew Priest
Email
apriest@essex.ac.ukLocation
6.129, Colchester Campus
Academic support hours
Wednesday, 9:30-10:30am Thursday, 1:30-2:30pm
Biography
As with so many people, history became my favourite subject because I had a great teacher. Because of her, I decided to study the subject at university and my plan was to focus on the Early Modern period but this didn't work out as expected because I became diverted by United States history. In my second year, I took a great module on the history of US foreign policy since 1890 again with an inspiring teacher and I was hooked, as I have been since. I studied history and American studies at the University of Birmingham, gaining my PhD in 2003. During this time I was also a Research Associate at the Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy at Birmingham. From 2003 I was a lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, leaving in 2013 to join the University of Essex. I have also been a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University in Washington DC and an Eccles Fellow in North American Studies at the British Library. My main areas of research and teaching interest are the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially foreign policy. I recently published Designs on Empire: America’s Rise to Power in the Age of European Imperialism (Columbia University Press, 2021) on the United States and the European empires of the late nineteenth century. This is an attempt to explain how American elites, especially Republicans who dominated policymaking after the Civil War, understood and reacted to empires and imperialism, and how these views affected their ideas about the role of the United States in the international system. I am also interested in the connections between domestic and foreign policies in the United States and have edited a book with Andrew Johnstone from the University of Leicester about US presidential elections and American foreign policy, which was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2017.
Qualifications
B.A. History and American Studies, University of Birmingham 1996
Ph.D. American and Canadian Studies, University of Birmingham, 2003
