About ME

I am a historian of modern international relations
and often comment on current affairs.

Susan Colbourn is a historian of international security and the global order since 1945. An expert on transatlantic relations, she writes and regularly comments on issues of European security and the past, present, and future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

She is the author of Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO, published by Cornell University Press in 2022. Currently, she is at work on a series of book projects about NATO and its place in the international order since the 1940s.

Colbourn serves as associate director of the Program in American Grand Strategy at Duke University where she manages the day-to-day operations of the program. Alongside the rest of the AGS team, Colbourn coordinates an array of co-curricular activities, bringing distinguished policymakers and scholars to Duke and offering distinctive, hands-on learning opportunities for students interested in US foreign policy and national security. At Duke, she also teaches courses in US foreign relations and international affairs.

She is also a senior fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto, an affiliate of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, and an affiliate of the America in the World Consortium.

Prior to coming to Duke, Colbourn held fellowships at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and International Security Studies at Yale University.

She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto with a concentration in modern international relations. She also holds an MA from the London School of Economics and an Hon. BA from Trinity College in the University of Toronto.

Originally Canadian, she now lives in Durham, NC.