Hello everyone! I would imagine that most of you reading this will be students in my tutor group (1) on History of Contemporary Warfare, 1945-91, thuogh as I've left the blog public you could be anyone (in which case welcome to you too). Before we get into the course let's take a bit of time to get to know each other.
On your own blogs I've asked you to give a bit of biographical information on yourself as well as answer the questions 1) why you're taking WiMW and 2) what you hope to get out of it. Why don't I do something similar?
As you can see from my profile and photograph to the right there I am Canadian by nationality but I haven't spent much time there since the early 1990s and have been in Britain off and on since 1998. I'm married and have two children, Charlie who is 19 months and Lily who is 6 months. I used to have hobbies--climbing and running--which I devoted a good deal of time to but now I spend my time either 1) working or 2) entertaining my kids, althuogh I have maintained a strong interest in recreational beer-drinking. In other words, I'm a pretty typical family guy of my age.
In the 'analogue' (that is not 'e') department I teach with Professor Lawrence Freedman (who, incidentally, laid out the course which you are now undertaking) an MA course called the Conduct of Contemporary Warfare. I also teach parts of some undergraduate courses, Art of War Studies and Contemporary Security Issues, as well as contributing a very small bit to a new course on Counterinsurgency.
I am lucky that my teaching generally reflects my research interest. Althuogh it is an absurdly sweeping topic of research what interests me is, quite simply, how (and also why and what for) contemporary wars are fought. More specifically, my writing of late has focussed on the role of technology in war, the elusiveness of victory--in both the abstract (ie., conceptual) and literal sense, the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (of which I am skeptical) and the future of infantry.
This is rather a departure from most of my writing in the past which has been on Civil-Military Relations in Russia and Eastern Europe and Army and State in Postcommunist Europe. (You may practice using your Athens password to access on-line journals by readinga a very nice review of the former here from the Journal of Slavic Military Studies). I remain extremely interested in Russia but civil-military relations is not something I am actively pursuing at the moment.
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