About me

Alexander J Davies is a doctoral candidate at LSE's Department of International Relations. He is the Coordinator for LSE's Security and Statecraft Research Cluster and Deputy Editor for Vol. 53 of Millennium: Journal of International Studies.

Alexander's doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Peter Trubowitz and Dr Luca Tardelli, explores the impact of domestic politics on the credibility of alliance commitments. He has taught American Grand Strategy and International Security at LSE and was awarded the LSE Summer School Class Teacher Award 2024. He has served as Research Assistant to Dr Theresa Squatrito since 2022. His research more broadly centres on international security, foreign policy analysis, alliances and grand strategy, with a particular emphasis on US and UK politics and how domestic politics shape foreign policy.

Alexander holds an MSc in International Relations (with Distinction) from LSE and a BA in Politics and International Relations (First Class) from the University of Nottingham, Malaysia. During his MSc, he worked as a Consultant on LSE's Community Engagement Programme. He is the Founder and Director of a UK-based 3D Environment Design studio and has over ten years of experience in the environment design industry.

Research topic

Domestic Drumbeats, Distant Echoes: Assessing Alliance Credibility from the ‘Outside-In’

Alexander's doctoral thesis examines the impact of domestic politics on the credibility of alliance commitments. It does so by exploring the US-UK and US-France alliances over the course of the Cold War, using original and robust archival evidence to assess how European leaders factored in the US' domestic politics to credibility calculations. The thesis also points forward towards the modern era and explores the impact of fractious politics on the US' ability to create sustainable and strong alliance networks, which provides a relevant and timely contribution to the academic literature..