Professional Affiliation

Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute, London; Non-Resident Associate Fellow, NATO Defense College

Expert Bio

Dr. Monaghan specializes in Russian grand strategy, particularly Moscow’s thinking about the future and ways in war. 

He founded the Russia Research Network in 2006, and continues as its Director. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, a Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome, and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in Washington, DC. 

Previously, he has directed research on Russia at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Centre, and at the NATO Defence College. Additionally, he has worked at Chatham House and the UK's Defence Academy, and been both an Academic Visitor at St Antony's College, Oxford and a George F. Kennan Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute.

Dr. Monaghan is widely published, and his books include Power in Modern Russia - Strategy and Mobilisation (2017), Dealing with the Russians (2019), Russian Grand Strategy in the Era of Global Power Competition (2022) and The Sea in Russian Strategy (2023). A new, second edition of The New Politics of Russia: Interpreting Change was published in spring 2024. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and literary festivals, and has acted as a consultant to parliaments, government ministries and militaries in the UK and US, NATO, the EU and to major international companies.

He began his education as an historian at the University of Edinburgh, before graduating from the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London, first from the MA programme with Distinction and the Simon O’Dwyer Russell prize in 2001, and then with a PhD in 2005.

Wilson Center Project

 "The Importance of History to Contemporary Russian Ways of War."  

Previous Terms

Former George F. Kennan Fellow