Amanda Behm

Amanda Behm is associate director at BESI, where she oversees ideas exchange, research cluster and graduate program support, and wider outreach. A trained historian, her research interests are in British and American politics, comparative imperial and anticolonial history, race and democracy, and historical political economy. Her book, Imperial History and the Global Politics of Exclusion: Britain, 1880-1940 (Palgrave 2018), explained why the struggles of empire gave rise to distinctive and enduring models of human difference and historical time. She has also published on the intellectual history of self-government and imperial crisis.

Before joining BESI in 2023, Amanda served as associate director of International Security Studies at Yale, taught history at Yale and UC Berkeley, and was senior lecturer in history at the University of York. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale, an M.Phil. in historical studies from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.