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The SIH Team
The Board
Sara Bush Castro
President
Sara Bush Castro, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History, United States Air Force Academy. She received her Ph.D in 2017 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Prior to that she worked as an intelligence analyst between 2003 - 2009.
Kathryn Barbier
Vice President
Board Member
M. Kathryn Barbier, Distinguished Visiting Professor, United States Air Force Academy (2021-2022) is a professor of History at Mississippi State University. She is a scholar of the Second World War with a particular focus on the Normandy invasion, deception, and double agents. She has published two books: D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion (2007) and Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals (2017), Her current research is on a WWII female double agent, whose work contributed to Operation Fortitude, the deception plan cover for the Normandy invasion. Dr. Barbier is also a member of the Society of Military History’s Board of Trustees, co-director of the Second World War Research Group, North America (SWWRG, NA), co-editor of War in History, and co-series editor of a six-volume Cultural History of War.
Michael Milner
Treasurer
Board Member
Michael David Miner has taught at Harvard University for over a decade including courses on intelligence, cyberspace, strategy, and international security. He is an Associate with the Intelligence Project in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He holds a particular interest in bureaucratic reform including the role of intelligence in policymaking. Michael earned his PhD at King's College London. The Perennial Quest: Intelligence Integration from London to Washington 1936-2019 examines the historical evolution of national intelligence systems in the United Kingdom and the United States. He holds a term appointment on the Fulbright Specialist Roster supported by the U.S. Department of State and volunteers in the United States Marine Corps Cyber Auxiliary. Dr. Miner is the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Fulbright Association and is a graduate of Dartmouth College.
Aaron Bateman
Board Member
Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs. Trained as a historian of science and technology, his interests lie at the nexus of science, technology, and international security. Specifically, Aaron’s research investigates how science and technology shaped U.S. foreign policy, nuclear strategy, alliance dynamics, and arms control during the Cold War. His scholarship explores these themes in the context of two distinct research areas. The first focuses on the history of national security activities in space during the Cold War. The second investigates how the exigencies of the nuclear age shaped U.S. global information networks. Aaron’s first book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative, is an international history of Ronald Reagan’s controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more popularly known as “Star Wars.”
Diana Bolsinger
Board Member
Diana I. Bolsinger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies and the former director of the Intelligence and National Security Studies (INSS) graduate program at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her research examines how Washington's clandestine security relationships historically have impacted U.S. policymaking. Dr. Bolsinger's current project, Dependence and Defiance: How Secret Intelligence Ties Broke the U.S. Pakistani Relationship, examines how Washington's secret programs in Pakistan shaped the overall bilateral relationship. She most recently published in The International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and The Texas National Security Review.
Matthew Hefler
Board Member
Matthew Hefler is a specialist of international history and intelligence studies. Hefler’s research examines the role of secret intelligence and security services in international diplomacy. He received his PhD in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where his research examined espionage and clandestine diplomacy in Franco-British relations during the Second World War. His doctoral research was shortlisted for the Michael Dockrill Prize in International History from the British International History Group (BIHG)
Jeff Rogg
Board Member
Jeff Rogg is an assistant professor at the Joint Special Operations University. Previously, Jeff was an assistant professor in the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at The Citadel. He was also a postdoctoral teaching and research fellow in the National Security Affairs Department at the U.S. Naval War College. He currently sits on the boards of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence and the North American Society for Intelligence History. His work has appeared in the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Intelligence and National Security, Just Security, The Washington Post, The National Interest, and the Los Angeles Times. Jeff is currently revising his book manuscript, The Spy and the State: The Story of American Intelligence, under contract with Oxford University Press.
Timothy Sayle
Board Member
Timothy Andrews Sayle is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the International Relations Program with a focus on NATO, Canadian-American Relations, and intelligence. He authored Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Cornell, 2019), co-edited other works, and contributed to multiple edited volumes and journals. Professor Sayle is a Senior Fellow of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History. He is a Fellow of Trinity College and alumnus of Massey College.
Doctoral Fellows
Doctoral Fellows
Jessi Gilchrist
Doctoral Fellow
Jessi Gilchrist is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies, doctoral fellow at the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy, and an associate fellow in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna. Her research focuses on imperial borders in North Africa with a particular interest in the evolution of border security and surveillance from colonial contexts to the present. Her work has most recently appeared in Intelligence and National Security and The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Jessi also convenes the King's Trauma-Centred Study Group.
Ryan Reynolds
Doctoral Fellow
Ryan Reynolds is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Mississippi State University. Reynolds’ dissertation focuses on the intersections between American grand strategy, law enforcement, and the military during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and he has received research grants from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Libraries. His work has appeared in The Strategy Bridge and The Journal of America’s Military Past, and he is currently a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Military History.
