M. Taylor Fravel

M. TAYLOR FRAVEL is Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China and East Asia.  His current projects examine the evolution of China’s military strategy since 1949 and the relationship between material capabilities and political influence in China’s rise as a great power.    

Taylor’s first book, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, was published by Princeton University Press in 2008 (Series in International History and Politics).  His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, and Asian Survey as well as in edited volumes.  His research has been supported by various organizations, including the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.  In March 2010, he was named Research Associate with the National Asia Research Program launched by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD.  He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a Fellow with the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program and a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

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