Dr Andrew Johnstone

I received my BA in History from the University of Liverpool and my postgraduate study (MPhil and PhD) was undertaken at the University of Birmingham. My research and teaching interests are in twentieth century US history with a particular focus on political and diplomatic history.

My research focuses on 20th-century U.S. foreign policy, particularly on the theme of U.S. internationalism, and on relations between the state and private spheres in creating and mobilising support for U.S. foreign policy.

My current research project examines the relationship between the rise of the American public relations industry and the concurrent rise of the United States as a world power in the twentieth century. This project offers the first comprehensive analysis of the relationship between these two trends, which reveals an important history of powerful but unelected influence over public opinion and corporate connections to government. Tracing the involvement of public relations firms through the American century, the project highlights how public relations firms influenced government but also clashed with it, and how they offered techniques to manage and manipulate opinion on foreign relations still used today. The project evolved out of my previous work, and the first work from it can be seen in my 2019 article Spinning War and Peace in the Journal of American Studies.

Books
Spinning the World: The Public Relations Industry and American Foreign Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025)

(Co-edited with Andrew Priest) US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017)

Against Immediate Evil: American Internationalists and the Four Freedoms on the Eve of World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014)

(Co-edited with Helen Laville) The US Public and American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2010)

Dilemmas of Internationalism: the American Association for the United Nations and US Foreign Policy, 1941-1948 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009)

Articles and chapters
'The Domestic Politics of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1942 Midterm Elections' in Patrick Andelic, Mark Mclay, Robert Mason (eds), Midterms and Mandates: Electoral Reassessment of Presidents and Parties (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

'Preserving Peace and Neutrality' in Brooke Blower and Andrew Preston (eds), The Cambridge History of America and the World, Volume 3; 1900-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)

'U.S. Foreign Relations during World War II' in Christopher R. W. Dietrich (ed.), A Companion to the History of U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to Present (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)

'The Perils of Perfectionism: American Reaction to the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals', Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 54, 2, (2019): 284-302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009418771755

'Spinning War and Peace: Foreign Relations and Public Relations on the Eve of World War II', Journal of American Studies, Vol. 53, 1, (2019): 223-251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817001293

'""A Godsend to the Country?"" Roosevelt, Willkie, and the Election of 1940' in Andrew Johnstone and Andrew Priest (eds), US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017)

'Before the Water's Edge: Domestic Politics and U.S Foreign Relations,' Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review, Vol. 45, 3, (2015):  25-29.

'Shaping our Post-war Foreign Policy: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Promotion of the United Nations Organisation During World War II', Global Society, Vol. 28, 1, (2014): 24-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2013.848185

'The United States and the United Nations: Hegemony, Unilateralism and the Limits of Internationalism' in Bevan Sewell and Scott Lucas (eds), Challenging US Foreign Policy: America and the World in the Long Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011)

'Creating a ""Democratic Foreign Policy"": The State Department's Division of Public Liaison and Public Opinion, 1944-1953', Diplomatic History, Vol. 35, 3, (2011): 483-503. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2011.00960.x

'Isolationism and Internationalism in American Foreign Relations', Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Vol. 9, 1, (2011): 7-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2011.550772

'To Mobilize a Nation: Citizens' Organizations and Intervention on the Eve of World War II' in Andrew Johnstone and Helen Laville (eds), The US Public and American Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2010)

'Americans Disunited: Americans United for World Organization and the Triumph of Internationalism', Journal of American Studies, Vol. 44, 1, (2010): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002187580999079X

'Clark Eichelberger and the Negotiation of Internationalism during World War II' in Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (eds), The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2006)

20th-century U.S. Political and Diplomatic History
The Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, particularly the Second World War
The USA and the Vietnam War

My teaching focuses on 20th Century U.S. History and I have previously taught modules including U.S. History since 1877, U.S. Foreign Policy, The USA and the Vietnam War, and The Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt

20th-century U.S. Political and Diplomatic History
The Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, particularly the Second World War
The USA and the Vietnam War

2019 Princeton University Library Research Grant
2016 British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award
2013 US Embassy Grant
2012 Institute for the Study of the Americas, Conference Grant
2012 Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship
2007 British Academy Small Research Grant
2007 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Research Grant
2001 Truman Library Institute Research Grant
2000 Royal Historical Society Travel Grant
1999 Roosevelt Study Center Grant-in-Aid

Politics as Usual? Roosevelt, War, and the Midterm Elections of 1942, Midterms and Mandates Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2 November 2018

The United States and International Organization in the Rooseveltian Century, Pursuing the Rooseveltian Century Conference, Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelburg, NL, 30 November 2017

Debating Dumbarton Oaks: Alternative Postwar Visions for International Organization, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Conference, Arlington, Virginia, 23 June 2017

Internationalist Ideology on the Eve of World War II, Historians of Twentieth Century United States Conference, Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelburg, NL, 7 July 2016

World War II as a Watershed in U.S. Foreign Relations, SHAFR Conference, University of San Diego, 23 June 2016