Steven M. Press
WCFIA Graduate Student Associate
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University
Steven Press holds a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University (2014). He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University. In 2014-2015 he was a College Fellow in History at Harvard; in 2015-2016 he was Research Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He was formerly a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, a Research Fellow at the Weatherhead Global History Initiative, a Graduate Student Affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Research Fellow.
Steven's research interests are European sovereignty, international relations, and the development of the treaty system. His first book, Rogue Empires: Conmen and Contracts Behind Europe's Scramble for Africa (forthcoming Spring 2017 with Harvard University Press), draws on archival work in ten countries and three languages. The manuscript offers a new approach to understanding the European Scramble for Africa by examining one of its forgotten projects: empires run by companies and individual adventurers.
In a recent article in the Journal of Modern History, Steven has uncovered the exchanges between Germany, China, and Cuba that led to the USA's lease for Guantanamo Bay in 1903.