Michael J. Williams

Michael John Williams is associate professor of public administration and international affairs and director of international relations graduate programs at the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs, senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, an associate of LSE IDEAS, editor-in chief of International Politics, and director of the Carnegie-Maxwell Policy Planning Lab in the Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs at Maxwell.

The Carnegie-Maxwell Policy Planning Lab (PPL) funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is part of the Corporation’s Bridging the Gap program. The PPL brings together leading scholars of international relations, with midcareer policy professionals, to develop future policy scenarios whilst also offering early career civil servants’ leadership and management training.

Williams’s research and writing focuses functionally on international security and regionally on Europe-Russia and NATO. He has published extensively in both academic and policy outlets on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as on issues of war and technology. The author of three books, his most recent was “Science, Law and Liberalism in the American Way of War: The Quest for Humanity in Conflict” (Cambridge University Press).

His work has been published in journals such as International Affairs, International Politics, International Peacekeeping, Global Governance and Cooperation & Conflict. He is also co-editor of the critically acclaimed Power in World Politics. As a doctoral candidate at LSE, he was editor-in-chief of Millennium: Journal of International Studies, volume 33.

His research has been supported by numerous foundations. Most recently he was a 2023 NATO Security Studies Fulbright Fellow at the Brussels School of Governance in Belgium. He previously held a Robert Bosch Fellowship in the German Ministry of Defense, a visiting fellowship at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute, and a DAAD Fellowship at the Bundeswehr Center for Social Science in Potsdam. During his time at the German Ministry of Defense he was special advisor to the Parliamentary State Secretary for Defense.

Prior to joining Syracuse University, Williams was director of the international relations program at New York University, associate professor at the University of London and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Royal United Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London.

Williams earned an honors B.A. with distinction from the University of Delaware, an M.A. with distinction from the Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin and a Ph.D. (2006) from London School of Economics and Political Science.