Welcome!

I am a Rosenwald Postdoctoral Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security at the Davidson Institute for Global Security at Dartmouth College, where I am also the Spencer Fellow. In Fall 2027, I will join the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor. I earned my Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 2025.

My research focuses on international security, U.S. foreign policy, grand strategy, domestic politics, intelligence, and American political development. Across these areas, I am interested in how international politics and domestic politics shape one another.

My book project, Learning from War: Managing Grand Strategy in the Wake of War, examines how wartime experiences shape the postwar politics of foreign policy. It is based on my dissertation, which was awarded the 2026 American Political Science Association International Security Section’s Kenneth N. Waltz Dissertation Award.

My research has been published in Security Studies.

Beyond academia, I write on international politics, intelligence, and the domestic politics of U.S. foreign policy. My research has been supported by Stand Together Trust, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Expression.

Previously, I served as a Ph.D. Fellow with the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, was a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center, and participated in Columbia University’s Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, as well as the Summer Seminar on History and Statecraft sponsored by the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin.

I received my B.A. in history and economics from Wichita State University in my home state of Kansas.

I can be reached at matthew.j.conklin@dartmouth.edu.