Leslie Rogne Schumacher is a scholar of Europe and the Middle East. He currently holds posts at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Additionally, Dr. Schumacher is an Academic Director for Haverford College’s Great Books Summer Program, and he previously served as Director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence at Wells College, where he also taught history and international studies. He further has held prior fellowships at Harvard, the University of London, and Saint Joseph’s University In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts for his civic engagement on refugee affairs. In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his book, The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain: Democracy and Diplomacy, Orientalism and Empire (2023).
Dr. Schumacher’s past and current work engages: imperial and national rivalry in the Mediterranean and Middle East; migration and refugee studies; the EU’s history and future, British and transatlantic foreign affairs; and the so-called East-West relationship. A selection of his published research includes works on: the Eastern Question and European integration theory; Britain’s Ionian protectorate; the 1890s Armenian massacres; and the future of BRICS+ in the Mediterranean Sea. He has two current book projects that he will be working on while in residence at Harvard. First, a brief study on post-1815 transnational nationalism in Italy, Greece, and Turkey, titled A Strong and Brilliant Universe: Transnational Nationalism in the Mediterranean Sea—Origins and Aftermaths. Second, an exploration of the connections between land, sea, and sky in modern-era Mediterranean migration, with a working title of Bathing in Crests of Foam: A Study of the Modern Mediterranean in Five Parts.