Our people
Phelan US Centre Staff
Meet our staff, faculty affiliates, and steering committee.
Peter Trubowitz
Centre Director
James Morrison
Associate Director
Adeola Akande Pierre-Noël
Centre Manager
Chris Gilson
Blog Editor, USAPP blog
Fiona Smith
Events Manager
Alec Bartishevich
Centre Administrator
Avan Fata
Podcast Producer - The Ballpark
Tanusha Muvva
Centre Administrator
Canpu Sun
Centre Assistant
Maya Adereth is a Course Tutor in Political Sociology at the LSE. Her research investigates the relationship between state formation and the politics of organised labour. In particular, she considers how the changing political economy of the United States informed the rise and persistence of business unionism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Chris Anderson is Professor in European Politics and Policy. His research examines elections and public opinion in democracies, and the link between the economy and political behaviour.
Dr Roham Alvandi is Associate Professor of International History at the LSE. He has written extensively on the history of Iran’s foreign relations and his current research focuses on global human rights activism and the origins of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Paul Apostolidis is a Professor and Department Tutor in the Government Department at LSE. His research integrates empirical field research involving Latinx migrant workers in the United States with political and critical theory.
Dr Fenella Cannell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research includes work on kinship and religion in the United States. She has published widely on her research with American Latter-day Saints and is currently completing a monograph on this work.
Dr Ryan Centner is Associate Professor of Urban Geography, focusing on aviation, migration, infrastructure, inequality, and place promotion, with US projects in the Pacific Northwest and the ‘American’ Pacific (Hawai’i, Guam, the CNMI, American Samoa).
Jeffrey M. Chwieroth is Professor of International Political Economy and Head of the Department of International Relations at LSE and co-investigator of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE.
Professor Michael Cox is Director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at LSE.
Dr Rebecca Elliott is an Associate Professor of Sociology; her research examines the economic and political governance of climate change, with a current focus on flood insurance, disaster risk management, and welfare state politics in the United States.
Fawaz A. Gerges is a Professor of international relations at the LSE where he also holds the Chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at LSE. His special interests include the international relations of the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East, the political economy of the Middle East, risk analysis, Islam and the political process, mainstream Islamist movements and jihadist groups (like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and ISIS).
Dr Lloyd Gruber's current research interests include globalisation, international political economy, and public policy analysis.
Jonny Hall
Dr Jonny Hall is an LSE Fellow in US Foreign Policy Analysis in the Department of International Relations. His research focuses on war-society relations in the United States, particularly with a focus on presidential rhetoric and the influence of public opinion in foreign policy formulation and implementation.
Dr Tanya Harmer is a specialist on the Cold War in Latin America, particularly on former Chilean President Allende and US-Chilean relations in the mid-1970s.
Dr Ryan Hübert is a political scientist and Associate Professor of Computational Social Science in the Department of Methodology. His substantive expertise is in US political institutions, and specifically the US legal system. He uses game theory, computational methods and quantitative analysis to study how US political institutions operate, with an emphasis on understanding how institutional rules influence the behavior of government officials and private citizens.
Dr Elizabeth Ingleson is an assistant professor of international history. She is a historian of U.S. capitalism and economic life, US-China relations, and the US in the world.
Professor Matthew Jones's research interests focus on the history of British and America foreign and defence policy policy in the twentieth century.
Sophie Kaldor is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations specializing in approaches to navigating uncertainty in the making of strategy. Her research is based on insights from psychology and neuroscience and is tested on historical case studies. Her other research interests include the role of narratives and morality in the making of foreign policy.
Dr Johann Koehler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy, where he studies the movement to pin American and British criminal justice policy to robust science — what in some circles is called ‘evidence-based’ justice reform.
Professor Nicola Lacey's research interests are criminal justice and American crime, punishment and inequality.
Dr Boram Lee is an Assistant Professor in LSE's International Relations Department. She studies how value-based groups intervene in inter-state interactions over economic issues. Her book project examines why certain American left-wing activists support trade agreements in exchange for side deals and how policymakers make such commitments appear credible to activists.
Dr David Madden is Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of the Cities Programme. He works on urban studies, political sociology, and social theory. His research interests include housing, public space, and urban restructuring, with a particular focus on New York City and London.
Dr Jacklyn Majnemer is an LSE Fellow in Political Science. Her research focuses on foreign nuclear deployments, nuclear security, alliance politics, and domestic sources of security policy.
John Minnich is an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at LSE. His research focuses on the political economy of China's rise and US-China relations, with a particular focus on industrial and technology policies in China.
Dr Rohan Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of International Relations. His research focuses on the grand strategies of rising powers and their impact on international security and order, with an empirical specialization in the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Mona Paulsen is Assistant Professor of International Economic Law, Department of Law. Her research focuses on international trade and foreign investment law and policy, particularly the history of international dispute resolution and economic diplomacy, as well as the intersection of the global economy and national security.
Dr. Sandra Portocarrero is an Assistant Professor of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She studies diversity work, organizational diversity initiatives, and undocumented entrepreneurship in the United States. Prior to joining LSE, Dr. Portocarrero completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia Business School and a Women in Public Policy Program Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in Sociology from Columbia University and a B.A. in Sociology (high honors) from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Portocarrero is a Latina U.S. citizen living with her daughter in Islington.
John Van Reenen is Ronald Coase School Professor at the London School of Economics and Digital Fellow, Initiative for the Digital Economy at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT).
Professor Stephanie Rickard's research is on trade policy, specifically non-tariff barriers to foreign trade (including state subsidies and discriminatory government procurement practices).
Dr Melissa Sands is an Assistant Professor of Politics and Data Science in the Department of Government at LSE. Her research examines the political and social consequences of context. She is especially interested in the effects of economic inequality, racial/ethnic diversity, and physical environment on political behaviour, in the United States and elsewhere.
Professor Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey’s research interests are in accountability, political economy, and mixed-methods research (e.g., quantitative text analysis, experimental study of nonverbal behaviour).
David Soskice has been School Professor and Professor of Political Science and Economics at the LSE since 2012, where his responsibilities include the promotion of interdisciplinary research; and is currently Research Director of the LSE International Inequalities Institute.
Dr Jessie Speer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment. Her research examines the politics of housing and domesticity, with a focus on urban displacement and homelessness in the United States.
Michael Storper is Professor of Economic Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment. He is also affiliated with the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at Sciences-Po in Paris, and the Department of Urban Planning in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA.
Dr Luca Tardelli is Associate Professor (Education) and Departmental Tutor in the International Relations Department at LSE. His research focuses on US foreign policy and military interventions, particularly how domestic and elite politics shape US decisions to intervene in civil wars and revolutions.
Silvana Tenreyro is Professor of Economics at the LSE, External Member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and President of the European Economic Association. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Econometric Society.
Dr Imaobong Umoren is Associate Professor of International Gender History at the London School of Economics. She works on the history of race and gender in the Caribbean, US and wider African diaspora in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Dr Elisa Wirsching is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Department of Government. Her research focuses on American political institutions, local politics, policing, and street-level bureaucracy in the US. She leverages a range of research designs and data sources, including causal inference methods for observational data, text analysis, administrative records, spatial data, and game theory.
Laura Pulido is the Collins Chair of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory.
Director of Phelan US Centre and Professor, International Relations, Chair.
Jeffrey M. Chwieroth is Professor of International Relations and Head of the Department of International Relations at LSE. Professor Chwieroth’s research interests include the political economy of international money and finance, and the politics of climate-related risks to financial stability and household wealth.
Dr Elizabeth Ingleson is an assistant professor of international history. She is a historian of U.S. capitalism and economic life, US-China relations, and the US in the world.
James Morrison is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE. He specialises in international political economy. Dr Morrison’s work examines the role of ideas and intellectuals in foreign economic policy. His first book is England’s Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the governance of economic beliefs.
Stephanie Rickard is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government at LSE. Professor Rickard’s research is on trade policy, specifically non-tariff barriers to foreign trade (including state subsidies and discriminatory government procurement practices).
David Soskice is LSE School Professor of Political Science and Economics Emeritus, Emeritus Professor of PoliticalScience at Duke University, Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Member of Academia Europeae, and of the LSE International Inequalities Institute.
Imaobong Umoren is Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. Dr Umoren’s research focuses on histories of race, gender, activism and political thought in the Caribbean, Britain and the US during the modern and contemporary periods.
G. John Ikenberry - Chair
John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies.
Sir Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and
W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics in the Department of Economics at LSE. He is a member of the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission.
Lloyd Gruber is the former Dean of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs and an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Development. Before joining LSE he was Associate Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
Matthew Jones is Professor of International History and former Head of the Department of International History at LSE. He is the Cabinet Office Official Historian of the UK strategic nuclear programme.
Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE. Before joining LSE, she was Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford.
Tracey Meares is Walton Hale Hamilton Professor at Yale Law School and a Founding Director of Yale’s Justice Collaboratory. She served on President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
John Phelan - Ex Officio
John Phelan is Chairman of Rugger Management and previously Co-Founder, Co-Managing Partner and Chairman Emeritus of MSD Capital. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Aspen Art Museum. He is a member of LSE’s North American Advisory Board and named the Phelan US Centre.
Leslie Vinjamuri is Director of the US and the Americas Programme and Dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She is a Professor in International Relations at SOAS University of London.
Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale University. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice, and the methods of social inquiry. He received his J.D. from the Yale Law School and his Ph.D. from the Yale Political Science Department where he has taught since 1984 and served as chair from 1999 to 2004.
Ian Shapiro is a Visiting Professor at the Phelan US Centre from 4 January to 30 May 2026.
Kohei Watanabe
Kohei Watanabe is an assistant professor at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study at Waseda University. He is interested in quantitative analysis of textual data from a political communication and international relations perspective.
Jeff Legro
Jeff Legro is University Professor at the University of Richmond where he also served as the Executive Vice President and Provost from 2017-2023.
Jeff Legro was a Visiting Professor at the Phelan US Centre from 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024
G. John Ikenberry
G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs. Ikenberry is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. In 2018-2019, Ikenberry was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University. In 2013-2014, Ikenberry was the 72nd Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. Ikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Professor Ikenberry is the author of eight books, most recently, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism in the Making of Modern World Order (Yale, 2020), which was a finalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award, listed as "Best of the Year" by Foreign Policy magazine, and listed at Editors’ Best of the Year by Foreign Affairs. Other books include: Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American System (Princeton, 2011); and After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, 2001), which won the 2002 Schroeder-Jervis Award presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book in international history and politics. He is also a reviewer of books on political and legal affairs for Foreign Affairs.
G. John Ikenberry was a Visiting Professor at the Phelan US Centre from 11 March 2024 to 15 July 2024.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan is the national-security columnist for Slate and the author of six books, including The Bomb, The Insurgents (a Pulitzer Prize Finalist), and The Wizards of Armageddon. He has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and many other publications. He was a member of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a special Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on the nuclear arms race. A graduate of Oberlin College with a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T., he has had fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations and New America, as well as a writer-in-residency at the American Academy in Berlin. He is an elected member of the Society of American Historians. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Fred Kaplan was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Phelan US Centre from 29 April 2024 to 31 May 2024.
Corina Lacatus is Senior Lecturer in Global Governance at Queen Mary University of London's School of Politics and International Relations. As a Visiting Fellow, she researches the diplomacy of hope in Transatlantic relations and the strategic use of political communication in the United States.
Dr David Smith is a Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
Jonathan Monten
Dr Jonathan Monten is Lecturer in Political Science and Director of the International Public Policy Program at the School of Public Policy, University College London.
Thomas Gift is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Public Policy at UCL, where he teaches on Public Policy Economics and Analysis and is the Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) Programme. He is founding Director of the UCL Centre on US Politics (CUSP)