BIO: PROFESSOR RISA BROOKS

Allis Chalmers Associate Professor of Political Science,
Marquette University

Risa Brooks is Allis Chalmers Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, an adjunct scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute (2017-2020), and a non-resident senior associate in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Professor Brooks is the author of Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press, 2008). She is also coeditor (with Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer) of Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Politics, Society and Modern War (Oxford University Press) and coeditor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press, 2007).

She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, and her professional experiences include positions as research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She has served as associate editor for the academic journals International Security and Security Studies. Her research interests include U.S. and global/comparative civil-military relations, political violence and militant organizations, and the Middle East and North Africa region.

Dr. Brooks' current research includes a book project (with Peter White) that evaluates the nature and implications of “political control of the military” in authoritarian regimes. It includes a new theory of variation in political control, which is evaluated with large-n quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis in cases selected from around the world, including several from the Middle East and North Africa. Her research on the United States focuses on issues of military professionalism, military advice and civilian control of the military. 

An additional current project explores the implications for territorial safe havens for the incidence of complex terror attacks in Europe and the United States and includes data collection of terrorist attacks in both regions. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Brooks remains engaged with policy debates related to her areas of expertise, and national security more broadly.

We were absolutely honoured to invite the wonderful Prof. Risa Brooks to deliver the opening keynote to our conference on “Military in Politics in Brazil”.
As an expert on the US, Risa faced the somewhat unusual challenge of addressing a room full of people ready to discuss Brazil. But we were keen to invite Risa as someone who could address our questions about Brazil from a more holistic, theoretical, and conceptual perspective. Indeed, her provocative presentation both challenged assumptions and provided fascinating new concepts with which to look at Brazil and think about its relevance to other countries of the Global South.

Here are some of her publications most relevant to our research project: