Nancy Collins

N. W. Collins is dedicated to U.S. national security, defense leadership, and military technology. 

She serves as the chair of Defense & Security Studies at Columbia University. Since joining the university in 2004, she has taught security studies, advised capstones, and directed a research institute. She is the author of Grey Wars (Yale University Press), an analysis of America's shifting forms of warfare, and serves as a fellow of Yale University.

Dr. Collins is committed to public service, undertaking her first assignment in 1992. She has served as a senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Defense for more than a decade. She has overseen programs, activities, and assessments for the Intelligence Community, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Special Operations Forces.

Her essays and commentaries appear in a range of publications, including Forbes, The New York Times, TIME, U.S. News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal. Her upcoming book, America's Edge, focuses on how the nation builds strategic technology, and her forthcoming series, Future Fight, analyzes America's accelerating investments in national security.

Dr. Collins is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Commission on Military History. She has served as a senior fellow at Georgetown University and at West Point. Collins attended the Loomis Chaffee School and later served on its board of trustees for a decade. She received a BA from Georgetown University and an MA and a PhD from the University of London.

Since her first circuit competition in 1989, Collins has pursued speed on the water, on tracks, and in the air. She has raced across the global ocean, in all fifty U.S. states, and in more than seventy countries. She is an 1897 member of U.S. Sailing. 

Over the past three decades, Collins has received awards, fellowships, and grants from, among others, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Yale University.

Education

• Ph.D. in History, University of London
• B.A. in Government, Georgetown University