Joy Rohde

Joy Rohde is a historian working at the intersection of U.S. intellectual history, political and policy history, and science and technology studies. She is interested broadly in the role that experts—especially social scientists—play in domestic and foreign policy debates. Her first book, Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research during the Cold War, investigates the Cold War origins and contemporary consequences of the Pentagon’s social research contracting system.

Joy is currently working on two projects. One is a synthetic history of the roles that the social sciences have played in foreign policy since the late 19th century. The second is a book project that examines the intellectual and policy consequences of mathematization and computerization of social scientific and policy research in the post-World War II United States.