Payam Ghalehdar is a lecturer and research fellow at the Hertie School's Centre for International Security. His research interests span US foreign policy, grand strategy, and the role of emotions in foreign policy decision-making. His first book, The Origins of Overthrow, which claims that US regime change interventions have been a consequence of the impact of emotional frustration on presidential decision-making, came out in 2021 with Oxford University Press.
During his academic career, Payam held fellowships at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, and was Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Göttingen and in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute.
