Michael Rainsborough

Michael Rainsborough (* 1963 ) is a British political scientist . He writes under the pseudonym M.LR Smith .

Rainsborough studied at the University of Wales (BScEcon in International Politics and Strategic Studies 1985) in Aberystwyth, where he received the J. Elizabeth Morris Prize, and at King's College London (MA in War Studies 1987). In 1986 he was a Robert Schuman Fellow in the Directorate General for Research at the European Parliament in Luxembourg. From 1987 to 1990 he was a PhD scholarship holder of the Economic and Social Research Council . In 1991 he obtained a Ph.D. from Lawrence Freedman.

He then worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and International Affairs of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and in the Defense Studies Department of the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Watchfield. He was also a lecturer at the Department of History at the National University of Singapore from 1992 to 1995 and a consultant and principal lecturer at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore from 1997 to 2001 .

Since 1997 he has taught at the Department of War Studies, King's College London ; In 2006 he received the Teaching Excellence Award. In 1999/2000 he was supported by the Ford Foundation and in 2000 by Monash University (travel grant) in Melbourne. In 2002 he became an Adjudicated Member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching. In 2003 he established the master's program Intelligence and International Security in London and headed it until 2009. He received further scholarships from the Higher Education Academy (2007), the Royal Historical Society (2009) and the Royal Geographical Society (2012) as well as from Lingnan University (2013) in Hong Kong. At the London Department of War Studies, which he has headed since 2016, he is Scientific Director of the Marjan Center for the Study Conflict & Conservation and Professor of Strategic Theory. His main focus is on strategy, especially the writings of Carl von Clausewitz , on aspects of warfare and the consequences of war.

Rainsborough is a consultant to the Home Office on counter-terrorism legislation , along with various expert opinions . Visiting professorships took him to the Norwegian Defense College in Oslo and the University of Queensland in Brisbane. In 1997 he became a member of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and in 1998 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts . He is also Associate Editor of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Strategic Studies and Small Wars & Insurgencies .

Fonts (selection)

• Fighting for Ireland ?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (1995)
• The Changing Face of Maritime Power (Associate Editor, 1999)
• The Changing Face of Military Power: Joint Warfare in an Expeditionary Era (Associate Editor, 2002)
• ASEAN and East Asian International Relations: Regional Delusion (with David Martin Jones , 2006)
• The Strategy of Terrorism: How It Works and Why It Fails (with Peter R. Neumann , 2007)
• Asian Security And The Rise Of China: International Relations in an Age of Volatility (2013)

Web links

• Michael Rainsborough at King's College London