Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Britain and Ireland
- Conflict, Violence and Genocide
- Europe
- International Relations
- State, Politics, and Law
Areas of Interest
Modern war and society; late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century grand strategy and international relations; the era of the First World War; defence policy and strategic thought; naval and maritime history.
Biography
Dr Paul Ramsey is a historian of war, strategy, and international relations. Dr Ramsey was an Edward S. Miller Research Fellow in Naval History at the United States Naval War College. He is a Junior Fellow of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College. Ramsey holds an MA in the History of Warfare from King’s College London, and a BA in Military and International History from the University of Salford. He completed his PhD in History at the University of Calgary.
Ramsey studies the role of early academic writing about strategy and public opinion about war in the formulation of foreign policy. He is interested in the part liberalism and democracy plays in making national strategy and in shaping international relations. As the US Naval War College Fellow, he researched the study of British strategy in the American armed forces after the First World War. His research on American strategy was published in an edited volume. Ramsey is working on a book titled The Nationalisation of War: Spenser Wilkinson and British Grand Strategy in the Age of Mass Democracy. This intellectual biography examines how Wilkinson, one of the great thinkers on war, strategy and society, pioneered the discipline of strategic studies and contributed to a nascent British grand strategy in the era of the First World War. Ramsey has published part of the research in War in History. His next research project will consider how new media and public opinion shaped the politics of grand strategy in the trans-Atlantic world before the Second World War.
Publications
Paul Ramsey, ‘“Our Frankenstein”? Spenser Wilkinson, Strategic Planning and the Creation of the British General Staff’, War in History, Vol. 32, No. 4, November 2025, pp. 344-365. Access publication here.
Paul M. Ramsey, ‘Field Marshal William Nicholson, 1st Baron Nicholson’, Forgotten Victorian Generals: Exercise of Command in the time of Queen Victoria, ed. C. Brice (UK: Helion, 2021), pp. 199-236. Access or purchase publication here.
Paul M. Ramsey, ‘Professor Spenser Wilkinson, Admiral William Sims and the Teaching of Strategy and Sea Power at the University of Oxford and the United States Naval War College, 1909-1927’, Strategy and the Sea: Essays in Honour of John B. Hattendorf, eds. N. A. M. Rodger, J. Ross Dancy, Benjamin Darnell and Evan Wilson (UK: Boydell Press, 2016), pp. 213-225. Access or purchase publication here.