Dr. James Lockhart was raised in the American Southwest, earning his PhD in history, specializing in US foreign relations and intelligence at the University of Arizona. Before Academe, he worked for about five years as a gaming surveillance agent in Las Vegas, being involved in the protection of casino operations and liaison with federal, state, and local law enforcement on organized crime, narcotics trafficking and other matters of vice, counterfeiting, and violation of gaming regulations. Outside of his broad interests in politics and history, he is an avid reader of novels and enjoy films, live music, swimming, and skiing.
His undergraduate and graduate teaching experience includes cross-cultural and comparative research and analysis of history and international affairs; strategic studies; foreign policy analysis; diplomacy; national security and defense; rural and urban guerrilla warfare/counterinsurgency; and lately, terrorism/counterterrorism.
He researches American foreign relations, intelligence, and the Global South -- primarily Latin America and the Caribbean. He is presently involved in a British Academy/Oxford-funded research network investigating the relationship between secrecy and visual culture, and his current book project assesses the career of Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters and southern South American intelligence in the Cold War, from the coup in Brazil to the conflict in the Falklands/Malvinas.
Recent publications include:
• With Micah Robbins. "John le Carré's Southern Turn: British Intelligence and Degenerative Satire in Post-Cold War Latin America and Africa," Intelligence and National Security (forthcoming in 2022);
• With Christopher Moran. "Principal Consumer: President Biden's Approach to Intelligence," International Affairs 98 (2022): 549-567;
• "Cuba and the Secret World," International History Review 43 (2021): 170-184; and
• Chile, the CIA and the Cold War: A Transatlantic Perspective (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019; paperback, 2021).
