Sten Rynning is Director of the Danish Institute of Advanced Study and a Professor of War Studies, the University of Southern Denmark. He served as interim dean of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences November 2021-May 2022 and as vice dean for research June 2019-August 2022.
Sten Rynning founded the University of Southern Denmark’s Center for War Studies in 2011 and headed it until 2019. He served on the official Norwegian Afghanistan Commission (2015-2016) and has in addition advised the commission of inquiry into the Denmark’s war participation in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2017-2019) as well as ambassador Peter Taksøe-Jensen’s official review of Danish Foreign Policy (2015-2016). In 2021 he was made Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.
Sten Rynning’s service to the academic community includes the presidency of the Nordic International Studies Association (2011-2015). He currently serves on the board of the Danish Institute for International Studies and the editorial board of the European Journal of International Security, International Affairs, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and the Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies. He was a visiting fellow at NATO’s Defence College (NDC), Rome, spring 2012, and has since regularly lectured at the NDC Senior Course as well as at the NDC Generals, Flag Officers and Ambassadors course. In the spring of 2017, he was a scholar in residence at American University’s School of International Service, Washington, D.C.
Sten Rynning’s publications include NATO in Afghanistan: The Liberal Disconnect (Stanford University Press 2012), Transforming Military Power since the Cold War: Britain, France, and the United States, 1991-2012 (co-author with Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, Cambridge University Press 2013), South Asia and the Great Powers: International Relations and Regional Security (editor, IB Tauris 2017), War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power (co-editor with Olivier Schmitt and Amelie Theussen, Brookings 2021), and “NATO’s Next Strategic Concept: Prioritise or Perish,” Survival (co-author with Jens Ringsmose, Fall 2021).
Sten Rynning latest book is NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine, A History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance (Yale University Press).
