About Louis
Philip Nicholas Lecturer in Maritime History
Postgraduate Research Co-ordinator, School of Society and Culture
I am a historian of war and diplomacy in the ninteteenth and twentieth centuries. My current research focuses on the relationship between sea power and world order in British and American strategic thought during the first half of the twentieth century, and during 2023 I held a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress to start work on my next book project, which examines these themes in the decades following the First World War.
I joined the University of Plymouth in 2019 from Merton College, Oxford, where I completed my DPhil thesis titled 'Internationalising Sea Power: Ideas of World Order and the Maintenance of Peace, 1890-1919'. At Merton, I held the John Roberts MC3 (Great War) scholarship between 2015-18, and a Smith Richardson Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship at International Security Studies, Yale University, between 2018-19. I previously completed my BA in War Studies at King's College London, and my MA in History at the University of Calgary.
Teaching
First Year
- HIS4001: What is History?
- HIS4004: Fractured Isles: Britain and Ireland, 1640-1990
Second Year
- HIST528: First World War at Sea
Third Year
- HIST625: Anglo-American Relations in Maritime Perspective
Postgraduate
- MAHI729: Sea Power in History
- MAHI730: All at Sea: Research Skills for Maritime History
Areas of expertise for postgraduate supervision
- Maritime and Naval History
- The First World War
- The League of Nations
- Grand Strategy
- The History of Strategic Thought
