Matthew Frakes

AWC Postdoctoral Fellow

Biography

Matthew Frakes is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He 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.”
 
Matt’s research focuses on U.S. foreign relations and national security strategy, with particular emphasis on the late Cold War and the emergence of the post–Cold War world. He is currently working to revise his dissertation into a book manuscript, which will examine the rise of strategies to fight the emerging global security threats of rogue states, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction from the early Reagan years to the aftermath of the Gulf War. The project traces the formation and evolution of the concept of “rogue states” as a new framework to guide U.S. national security following the end of the Cold War, laying the groundwork for the War on Terror after 9/11.
 
While at the University of Virginia, Matt was awarded the Jefferson Fellowship and the Batten School’s National Security Fellowship. Matt also holds an M.A. in history from the University of Virginia, an M.Sc. in international and world history from the London School of Economics, an M.A. in international and world history from Columbia University, and an A.B. in history from Princeton University.