Professor Michael Goodman

Professor Michael S. Goodman is Professor of ‘Intelligence and International Affairs’ and the Director of the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence.  He is a former Head of the Department of War Studies, King's College London.  He is currently Visiting Professor at the Norwegian Intelligence School and at Sciences Po in Paris.  He has published widely in the field of intelligence history, including The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (Routledge, 2015), which was chosen as one of The Spectator’s books of the year.  He is series editor for ‘Intelligence, Surveillance and Secret Warfare’ for Edinburgh University Press; and is a member of the editorial boards for five journals. He has spent many years on secondment to the Cabinet Office, where he has been the Official Historian of the Joint Intelligence Committee: Volume II will be published in 2024. He is a current British army reservist.

Research Interests

• Intelligence Studies
• Nuclear Weapons History
• Cold War History

Publications

He has published widely in the field of intelligence history and scientific intelligence, including Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb (Stanford University Press, 2008),  Spinning Intelligence: Why Intelligence Needs the Media, Why the Media Needs Intelligence (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2009), Learning from the Secret Past: Cases in British Intelligence History (Georgetown University Press, 2011), The Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies(Routledge, 2014); Spying on the World: The Declassified Documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) and The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Volume I: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis (Routledge, 2014).  This last book, the Official History, was chosen as one of The Spectator’s books of the year.

His articles have appeared in Intelligence and National Security, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, CIA Studies in Intelligence, Cold War History, the Journal of Cold War Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Cryptologia, The Journal of Intelligence History, Contemporary British History, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, Diplomacy and Statecraft, and International History Review.

He is series editor for ‘Intelligence, Surveillance, and Secret Warfare’ for Edinburgh University Press and ‘Intelligence and Security’ for Hurst/Oxford University Press. He is a member of the editorial boards for Intelligence and National Security; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs; The Journal of Intelligence History and Contemporary British History.

For a full list of research outputs and publications please see his Research Profile.

PhD Supervision

He is happy to offer PhD supervision in the following broad areas: 

• Intelligence history, particularly the United Kingdom and USA 
• Contemporary intelligence issues
• Conceptual intelligence issues
• The history of nuclear weapons
• Britain’s Cold War History

Current PhD students

• Corrigan, Polly, ‘Soviet Intelligence and the Persecution of Dissidents, 1937-1968’.  [First Supervisor]
• Mazzola, Stephanie, ‘Intelligence Services in Post Conflict State Building: A Comprehensive Study of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya’.  [First Supervisor]
• Burnett, Berenice, ‘A Damage Assessment of the Cambridge Five’ [First Supervisor]
• Schaefer, David, ‘The JIC Machinery and the Evolution of Commonwealth Intelligence Assessment, 1945-70’ [First Supervisor]
• Yelamos, Charlotte, ‘The Materiality of Secret Intelligence: An Archaeological Analysis of Brixmis Intelligence Missions’ [First Supervisor]
• Parker, Celia, ‘Leadership and Management of the UK Intelligence Community’ [First Supervisor]
• Aswad, Nizar, ‘Analysing the Libyan WMD Programme and the 2003 Rollback Decision’ [First Supervisor]
• Long, Magda, ‘Covert Action in the United States’ [Second Supervisor]

Completed PhD students

• Miner, Michael, ‘Toward National Intelligence: Lessons from British History for an American Future – The Joint Intelligence Committee and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’.  [First Supervisor]
• Brown, Richard, ‘The Dominions and the Bomb: Assessing the Imperial Aspects of the British Nuclear Programme, 1940-1952’.  [First Supervisor]Pyne, Kate, ‘The history of Thermonuclear Warhead Principles in the UK’.  Completed: 2016.  [First Supervisor]
• Morris, Daniel, ‘Terrorism and the Nature of Surprise Attack’.  Completed: 2009.  [First Supervisor]
• Geltzer, Joshua, ‘Al-Qaeda as Audience’.  Completed: 2009.  [Second Supervisor]
• Lethier, Pierre, ‘The Clandestine Clapperboard’.  Completed: 2010. [Joint First Supervisor]
• Mahadevan, Prem, ‘The uses and limitations of intelligence in counter-terrorism’.  Completed: 2010. [Second Supervisor]
• Cormac, Rory, ‘The Joint Intelligence Committee and Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire’.  Completed: 2011.  [First Supervisor]
• Johnson, Laura, ‘Establishing broadcast monitoring as Open Source Intelligence: The BBC Monitoring Service during the Second World War’. Completed: 2013.  [Second Supervisor]
• Vogt, Tobias, ‘Combating the 21st Century Nuclear Threat: US WMD Politics, Policy and Implementation’.  Completed: 2013.  [Second Supervisor]
• Wynter, Matthew, ‘Merchants of Light: Dr R V Jones and the influence of British Scientific Intelligence on British military strategy in WWII’.  Completed: 2014.  [Second Supervisor]
• Strehler, Christian, ‘Jihadism and the West – The United States’ and Britain’s approach to global jihad prior to 9/11’.  [First Supervisor]
• White, Martha, ‘Fuzzy Thinking: Lessons from Philosophy for Applying Analytical Methodologies in Intelligence Analysis’.  [First Supervisor]
• Riehle, Kevin, ‘Insider Information: Defectors’ Insights into a Closed System’.    [First Supervisor]