Elliott School of International Affairs

Nicholas Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. His research and teaching interests include great power politics, military intervention and territorial expansion, conventional military operations, and East Asian international relations. His first book, Inadvertent Expansion: How Peripheral Agents Shape World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2024), was awarded the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Best Book Award for 2026. His research and other writings have also been published in journals such as International Security, International Interactions, Political Science Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Strategic Studies Quarterly, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, among other outlets. He previously had fellowships at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, the MacMillan Center Program on Japanese Politics and Diplomacy at Yale University, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.

I am an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers.

I teach undergraduate courses on International Affairs, Nationalism, Patriotism, and European Integration, as well as graduate seminars on Globalization Backlash Politics, Nation-Building in the Balkans, Nationalism and Nation-Building, and Qualitative Research Methods.

My research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics, international security, and history, while I aim to develop theoretical frameworks that cross geographic boundaries. My publications focus on the impact of international politics on nation-building,  political development, and diaspora policy.  My award-winning book, The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012, and a co-authored book, Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. I have also co-edited two volumes: Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns and The Microfoundations of Diaspora Politics. My work has also been published in the Annual Review of Political Science; Comparative Political Studies; Security Studies; International Political Science Review; Journal of Global Security, Studies; Perspectives on Politics; European Journal of Political Research; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Territory, Politics, Governance; Nations and Nationalism; Political Science Quarterly; Social Science Quarterly; Nationalities Papers; Nationalism and Ethnic Politics; Ethnopolitics; as well as various edited volumes.

After completing my Ph.D. in political science at Yale University and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, I joined the Department of Political Science at George Washington University. I served as Associate Dean for Research at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs (2017-18) and a representative of the Elliott School of International Affairs to GW’s Faculty Senate since 2018.

Beyond GW, for over a decade, I have been serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, the world’s largest scholarly organization dedicated to the study of nationalism, ethnic conflict, and ethnic conflict-management in Eurasia. From 2019 to 2021, I served as Chair of the Council for European Studies Research Network on “Historical Study of States and Regimes,” while since 2021, I have been serving as an executive board member. I am also a member of the editorial board of Nations and Nationalism and  Diaspora Studies.

Beyond academia, I engage with the public as a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of PONARS Eurasia, and through briefings and presentations to various branches of the U.S. government. I bridge scholarly expertise and broader audiences through academic publications, public talks, and media commentary. My work has been featured in Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post‘s Blog, the Monkey Cage, Foreign Policy, and The Guardian. In addition to writing, I have co-produced American Constitutive Stories, a podcast exploring American national identity, and directed Searching for Andreas: Political Leadership in Times of Crisis, a documentary on the dangers of charismatic leadership.