Visualising war podcast, episode 31

In this week’s podcast, Alice and Nicolas discuss strategy with Prof. Phillips O’Brien. Phil joined the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews in 2016 as Professor of Strategic Studies; he also directs the university’s interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of War and Strategy, which has some obvious areas of overlap with the Visualising War project. His interests in warfare and strategy range widely, with a particular focus on the early twentieth century. Most recently, in 2019 Phil finished his biography of Admiral William D Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff and (as Phil puts it in the title) the ‘second most powerful man in the world’, who became de facto president of the United States when Roosevelt’s health started to fail.

Strategic studies look at how decisions about war (including avoidance of war and concluding them through treaties) are made at the highest political level, and what influence those decisions have on the course of wars and battles. Strategy-making is an act of visualisation in itself; and of course it can be heavily influenced by past habits of visualising war. We discuss the connection between strategy-making and storytelling, and how descriptions of strategy end up shaping the ways we visualise individual conflicts and war more broadly.

Read more about Prof O'Brien's research: [ Ссылка ](cdfc7c3c-0927-472d-afb5-3c353b4c2789).html


View the podcast series on Buzzsprout: [ Ссылка ]

Read more about the Visualising War project: [ Ссылка ]

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