Michael W Mosser
Phone: +1 512 232 7280
Email: mosserm@austin.utexas.edu
Dr. Michael W. Mosser is the Director of the University of Texas at Austin Center for European Studies (CES). He is also an Associate Professor of Instruction with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the International Relations and Global Studies (IRG) program. He is a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and was the Executive Director of the Global Disinformation Lab (GDIL) from 2022 to 2024.
He teaches courses in European and international security, European environmental policy, comparative and European politics, international organizations, and foreign policy analysis. From 2018 to 2023, he was the inaugural faculty advisor for the University of Texas at Austins Peace Corps Prep program, and has also served as a faculty liaison to the US Department of States Diplomacy Lab program. He serves on various academic advisory bodies on campus, including as a member of the Environmental Justice (EJ) Faculty Learning Community, an Ambassador in the Experiential Learning Initiative (ELI) and a member of the non-traditional student (NTS) advisory board. He has won multiple awards for his teaching at UT-Austin, most notably being selected as a member of the 2021 "Texas Ten" by the Texas Exes, and the 2016 Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Fellowship.
His most recent published work (with Marion Foster) is "Small states, subregional minilateralism and European foreign policy," in Högenauer and Miík (eds.) Small States in EU Policy-Making: Strategies, Challenges, Opportunities (Routledge: 2024). His article "Embracing embedded security: the OSCE's understated but significant role in the European security architecture" was published in European Security in July 2015. He is presently working on a project conceptualizing the impact of disinformation on the American electoral process.
Other research includes an article co-authored with Dr. Dan Cox of SAMS, "Defense Forecasting in Theory and Practice: Conceptualizing and Teaching the Future Operating Environment," published online at Small Wars Journal in January 2013. Previous articles include Identimetrics: Operationalizing Identity in Counterinsurgency Operations was published online at the e-International Relations website (http://www.e-ir.info) in March 2010 and The Promise and the Peril: The Social Construction of American Military Technology, in the Whitehead Journal of International Diplomacy and International Relations, Volume XI, Number 2 (Summer/Fall 2010), pp. 91-104. In addition Mosser published the lead article in the Puzzles Versus Problems: The Alleged Disconnect between Academics and Military Practitioners, symposium in Perspectives on Politics 8:4 (December 2010), pp. 1077-1086, as well as The Myth of a Global Insurgency: The Dangers of Mistaking Coherence for Capability, in JFQ: Joint Force Quarterly, 56:1 (January 2010), pp. 140-143. While at SAMS, he published the lead article of a series on the military role in the amnesty, reconciliation and reintegration (AR2) process entitled The Armed Reconciler: The Military Role in the Amnesty, Reconciliation, and Reintegration Process, Military Review, Vol. 87 (Nov./Dec. 2007), pp. 13-19.
A southwestern Pennsylvania native, Dr. Mosser is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (BA, Political Science and History) and the University of Wisconsin Madison (MA and PhD, Political Science). He has published articles and book chapters on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as well as in the fields of military art and science and military sociology more generally. He is active in student events and activities on campus related to his research and teaching fields, has published op-eds in major Texas newspapers and has been a regular guest on KUT Radios Texas Standard news program.
