Elizabeth Saunders

Elizabeth N. Saunders is an associate professor in the School of Foreign Service and a core faculty member in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, as well as a nonresident senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. Her research and teaching interests focus on international security and U.S. foreign policy, including the presidency and foreign policy, and the politics of the use of force.

Her book, “Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions,” was published in 2011 by Cornell University Press, and won the 2012 Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s International History and Politics section. Currently she is working on a second book, “The Insiders’ Game: Elites, Democracies, and War,” which argues that elites, rather than voters, are the main audience for foreign policy decisions in democracies. Saunders is also an editor and contributor to The Washington Post’s “Monkey Cage” blog.

Previously, Saunders was an associate professor at George Washington University; a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a postdoctoral fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University; a Brookings Institution research fellow in the Foreign Policy program; and a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, the American Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Review.

She holds an bachelor's in physics and astronomy and astrophysics from Harvard University; an M.Phil. in international relations from the University of Cambridge; and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Yale University, 2007
• M.Phil., Yale University, 2004
• M.A., Yale University, 2003
• M.Phil., University of Cambridge, 2001
• B.A., Harvard University, 2000