About
AT A GLANCE:
Former Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College and retired
Foreign Service Officer
RESEARCH AREAS:
• Insurgency and Civil War
• Unconventional Warfare
• South and East Asia Studies
BIOGRAPHY:
Chris Mason, PhD is former Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army
War College and a retired Foreign Service Officer. He entered federal service as a
Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador in 1977. After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon he
served as a Navy Officer for five years on a destroyer in the Pacific Fleet and then
as a naval gunfire officer and parachutist with the Marine Corps.
After several years as a magazine editor he returned to federal service as a Foreign Service Officer in Africa and Europe. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 in Paktika Province on the Pakistan border. While earning his PhD at The George Washington University, Dr. Mason was the South Asia desk officer for the Center for Advanced Operational Culture at MCB Quantico. He joined the faculty of the U.S. Army War College in 2014 as Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute, where he taught the South Asia Regional Studies, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, and Vietnam War courses. In 2017 he created the Study of Internal Conflict (SOIC) and was its director for eight years. The Study of Internal Conflict is now a part of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South °®¶¹´«Ã½.