Priya Satia specializes in modern British and British empire history.

Prof. Satia is a cultural historian of the material and intellectual infrastructure of the modern world in the age of empire. Her work examines the origins of state institutions, military technologies, ideas and practices of development, and the anti-colonial responses they inspired in order to understand how the imperial past has shaped the present and how the ethical dilemmas it posed were understood and managed.

Prof. Satia has explored these questions in studies of British policing of the Middle East in the era of World War One, the invention of radio during the Boer War, the British Indian development of Iraq, state secrecy in mass-democratic Britain, the gun-making exploits of a Quaker family during the industrial revolution, the Partition of British India, the imperial consequences of the historical discipline itself, and other projects. Her work on aerial policing has also informed her analysis of American drone use in the Middle East. An essay on her formation as a historian is available here in the H-Diplo series "Learning the Scholar's Craft."

Her first book Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008) won the 2009 AHA-Herbert Baxter Adams Book Prize, the 2009 AHA-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, and the 2010 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize.

Her second book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Penguin Press/Duckworth, 2018) won the 2019 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize, the Wadsworth Prize in Business History, and the AHA's Jerry Bentley Prize in world history. It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in History and shortlisted for the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.

Prof. Satia's third book, Time's Monster: How History Makes History (Belknap HUP/Penguin Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Book Prize  and the 2021 Bronze Prize in History (World) from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was also listed in BBC History Magazine Books of the Year (2020) and the New Statesman's Best Books of the Year (2020).

Her work has also appeared in the American Historical Review, Past and Present, Technology and Culture, Humanity, Annales, History Workshop Journal, and other scholarly journals, as well as edited volumes across a range of fields (e.g. environmental history, Middle Eastern history, the Indian Ocean world, British politics, aerospatial theory, humanitarianism), and mainstream media (e.g. the Financial Times, the Nation, Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Aeon, the Tribune, Slate.com, CNN.com, and more).

Prof. Satia is working on a new book project, The Lake of Liberation, on British colonialism in Punjab and its legacies.

Vibeke Kieding Banik is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. Her main focus of research is on the history of minorities in Scandinavia, particularly Jews, with an emphasis on migration and integration. Her research interests also include gender history, and her current project investigates whether there was a gendered integration strategy among Scandinavian Jews in the period 1900-1940. Dr. Banik has authored several articles on Jewish life in Norway, Jewish historiography and the Norwegian women’s suffragette movement. She has taught extensively on Jewish history and is currently writing a book on the history of the Norwegian Jews, scheduled to be published in 2015.

Vibeke Kieding Banik was a visiting scholar and Anna Lindh Fellow with The Europe Center in 2013-2014.

Prof. Heinz Gärtner is academic director (since 2013) at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) in Vienna, Austria and senior scientist at the University of Vienna. He is Lecturer at the National Defense Academy and at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the World Policy Institute as well as the Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University in 2001-2002. In 2008 he held again a Fulbright Professorship at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). In 2012 he was Visiting Professor at the FSI. Heinz Gärtner was visiting Professor at St. Hugh's College, Oxford (1992), and at the Institute for International Relations, Vancouver, Canada (1993), and at the University of Erlangen (Germany) (1994/95). He lectures often at other American, European, and Asian universities and research institutes. Heinz Gärtner has received international recognition for his work on European, international security, and arms control. He is also a frequent commentator on European and Austrian television, radio, and print media, including CNN Europe and the BBC. He also acts as a Special Adviser to the Austrian Ministry of Defense. He was academic member of the Austrian delegation of the Wassenaar arms export control arrangement in the framework of the Austrian presidency (2005). He supervised several large projects on NATO, and comprehensive security, and arms control. Heinz Gärtner received the Bruno Kreisky (legendary former Austrian Chancellor) Award for most outstanding Political Books: “Models of European Security“ (1998). Gärtner holds several international, and European, and Austrian academic memberships.

Heinz Gärtner is the author of numerous academic articles and books.

Some of his books are:

• Die neue Rolle der USA und Europa (America’s New Role and Europe), (lit-Verlag: Münster), 2012.
• Obama and the Bomb: The Vision of a World free of Nuclear Weapons (ed.), (Peter Lang publisher: Frankfurt-New York- Vienna; 2011).

• USA – Weltmacht auf neuen Wegen: Die Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik Barack Obamas, (America - World Power breaks New Ground), third updated edition, (lit-Verlag: Münster), 2010.
• Internationale Sicherheit - Definitionen von A-Z (International Security - Definitions from A-Z), second revised and extended edition, (Nomos: Baden-Baden), 2008.
• European Security and Transatlantic Relations after September 11 and the Iraq War, editor together with Ian Cuthbertson, (Palgrave-MacMillan: Houndmills), 2005.
• Small States and Alliances, editor together with Erich Reiter, (Springer: Berlin) 2001, 300 pages.
• Europe’s New Security Challenges, editor together with Adrian Hyde-Price and Erich Reiter, (Lynne Rinner: Boulder/London) 2001, 470 pages.

Heinz Gärtner also is editor of the books series “International Security” (Publisher: Peter Lang).

Some of his recent academic articles are:

• Deterrence and Disarmament, Europe’s World online, 26 02 2012.
• The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Libya,” Europe’s World online, 02 07 2011.
• A Nuclear-Weapon Zone in the Middle East, Europe’s World online, 24 05 2011.
• A year of Amano's leadership in IAEA, Bulletin of American Atomic Scientists, December, 2011.
• Non-proliferation & Engagement: Iran & North Korea should not let the opportunity slip by, Defense & Security Analysis, Volume 26 edition 3, September 2010.
• Towards a Theory of Arms Export Control, International Politics, Vol. 47, 1, January 2010, 125–143.

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)