PhD Student Bios

U.S. Army, Professional Military Education, Professionalization, American Civil War

Ben Brands, a PhD candidate in History, specializes in the history of the United States Army in the nineteenth century. He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 2004 and his M.A. from George Mason University in 2015. From 2015 to 2017 he served as an Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, where he taught courses on Military History and the American Civil War. He has also taught American and European Military History for Oregon State University's ecampus. He has previously served as an infantry officer in the United States Army, and worked at the U.S. Army's Center of Military History helping to writing the official history of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since 2019 he has been employed full time as a historian for the American Battle Monuments Commission, and agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the care and administration of America's overseas military cemeteries and monuments.

He is currently working on his dissertation, tentatively titled "Natural Genius vs. Safe Leadership: the Debate over Professional Military Education in the United States Army, 1880-1903." From 2018 to 2019 he held the L. Claire Kincannon Internship at the George Mason University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center, which resulted in the publication of the digital project "Please Send Food: A G.I.'s War in Italy."