hosted by Professor Nina Hall


Jeff D. Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Professor in the Department of Political Science and Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University. He is also Director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University. His research focuses on international order and security, especially as related to energy and the environment.

His triple award-winning book, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order, draws lessons from oil history about how states and other actors create and maintain international governance arrangements (Oxford University Press, 2021). The book then applies those lessons to other problems like climate change, peacekeeping, finance, and nuclear politics. The book won the APSA Jervis-Schroeder Best Book Award in International History and Politics, the Best Book Award (co-winner) from the APSA International Collaboration section, and the Best Book (Energy Policy--Non-Fiction) award from the American Energy Society.

His previous book, Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War, was published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press. Colgan has published work in International Organization, Foreign Affairs, World Politics, International Security and elsewhere. He also occasionally blogs at the Monkey Cage and Foreign Affairs.

Colgan previously taught at the School of International Service of American University (2010-2014), and was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, in 2012-13. He completed his PhD at Princeton University, and was a Canada-US Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley, where he earned a Master's in Public Policy. Colgan has worked with the World Bank, McKinsey & Company, and The Brattle Group.