Dr Steven Ward

Steven received his PhD from Georgetown University’s Department of Government in 2012. He also holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He conducts research, writes, and teaches in the area of international relations, especially international security. He is currently engaged in two major research projects. The first explores the relationship between status concerns and domestic politics in the context of relative decline. The second investigates the role of tripwire forces as deterrent signals. His first book – Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2017) – explains how status anxiety can push rising states to launch costly, risky challenges to the international status quo, and tests this account against the records of Wilhelmine Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the United States around the turn of the 20th century. His work has been published in Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Studies, International Theory, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and International Interactions, and has been featured in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.

Steven was previously Assistant Professor of Government and Associate Director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University.