The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Summer Institute is an intensive professional development program that brings together graduate students and early-career professionals. The Institute fosters a collaborative learning community and equips participants with content knowledge, pedagogical tools, and career advice.
2026 Summer Institute
Title: Strategic CulturesLocation: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OHDates: June 20-24, 2026Facilitators: Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew PrestonCall for Papers
about
Historically, international relations has fluctuated between periods of crisis and periods of relative stability. Some refer to our current age as one of sustained “polycrisis,” unleashed by what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the “great changes unseen in a century.” Of course there has hardly been much peace or stability in the past 150 years, but the last time the world was in such a state of multipolar instability and insecurity was probably the 1930s. We are now at another threshold moment in which America’s place in the world may well be in the process of being transformed as well as reimagined. If history is any guide, some of this new thinking will endure; most of it will become obsolete.
The 2026 SHAFR Summer Institute will focus on the variety of U.S. strategic cultures that emerged in response to previous moments of international crisis. At its most fundamental level, strategy applies all available means to achieve a desired end. Compared to most other states in the international system, the modern United States has possessed a much deeper pool of means in pursuit of far more expansive ends. The capaciousness of both means and ends has provided for a richly diverse array of American strategic cultures, some of which were lasting. Summer Institute participants will explore the ways in which previous generations of diplomats, strategists, economists, military planners, missionaries, activists, intellectuals, and others reconceived America’s place in the world and proposed to secure and bolster it. We hope to have as wide a chronological perspective as possible, from the colonial era to the present. How did the diplomatic, economic, military, demographic, technological, humanitarian, legal, ideological, and environmental challenges of the past shape US strategic culture about world order, and about the future of the world itself? In the process, we will consider strategic cultures broadly, ranging across the ways in which history, political and social structures, and scores of other factors influence worldviews and thus the strategy-making processes of individuals, groups, and states. And we will tackle issues related to grand strategy. Ultimately, we also hope to offer some perspective on our current international condition and possible ways forward for the U.S. and the world.
Participants
Cody J. Billock, University of Florida's Hamilton School
Sean Case, Independent Scholar
Ty Collier, George Washington University
Robert Diaz, University of Michigan
Holly Harris, Southern Methodist University
Charlie Heffernan-Brown, University of Virginia
Christopher Hulshof, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joseph Edward Johnson, Temple University
Shelby Jones, Purdue University
Emily Needham, University of Virginia
Marc A. Reyes, University of Connecticut
Zachary Tayler, Ohio University
Pasuth Thothaveesansuk, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bohan Zhang, Rice University
2025 Summer Institute
Title: Writing the History of U.S. Foreign Relations in an Age of CrisisLocation: Yale University, New Haven, CTDates: June 21-25, 2025Facilitators: Alvita Akiboh and Michael BrenesCall for Papers
about
The largest land war in Europe since World War II, looming conflict with China, war in Gaza, and instability in states such as Haiti, Syria, and Afghanistan have fundamentally reshaped global affairs. These conflicts exist alongside unprecedented rates of economic and racial inequality, the escalating havoc wrought by climate change, and the reemergence of autocratic figures in the United States and around the world. Indeed, the world is currently embroiled in what commentators have called a “polycrisis.” These crises present challenges and opportunities for historians of U.S. foreign relations to explore the origins of our current moment, to offer scholars and the public nuanced perspectives on how to understand our world. Yet the historical profession—and the humanities broadly—is in the throes of its own crisis. Decades of austerity, neglect, and precarity have eroded the historical discipline—and the ranks of historians— with many scholars of U.S. foreign relations unable to secure tenure-track positions or produce enduring scholarship in alternative careers.
In this light, we ask crucial questions about the role of historians of the United States and the world at this critical juncture. What role can history serve to inform in our age of crisis? How should historians of U.S. foreign relations write history in an age of crisis? What key themes and subjects should be the focus of the field given the turbulence of our age? How can we situate and comprehend our professional crisis within the context of a global “polycrisis?” We will seek to answer these questions and others, while also helping a cohort of young scholars to develop sophisticated and nuanced perspectives that will shape their work on the inevitable crises of the future.
Participants
Benjamin V. Allison, University of Texas at Austin
Yoram Carboex, Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim
Grace Easterly, University of Connecticut
Victoria Gonzalez Maltes, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris
