Evan D. McCormick laid the groundwork for the Obama Presidency Oral History’s examination of US foreign policies and of the presidency in a global context. He recorded interviews with 90 narrators for the project on a wide array of topics, including counterterrorism, development aid, and pro-democracy movements abroad. At Incite, Evan is also the co-principal investigator of the Obama Scholars Global Leadership Study, a ten-year prospective oral history project based on interviews with the Obama Foundation Scholars, a cohort of global change agents selected annually to spend a year at Columbia University World Projects.
Evan’s research and writing focus on the history of U.S. foreign policy, the presidency, and contested ideas of security, democracy, and rights in the 20th and 21st centuries. His scholarship has appeared in Diplomatic History and the Journal of Cold War Studies, and his commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, Texas National Security Review, War on the Rocks, Clarín (Buenos Aires) and La Razón (Madrid).
Evan received his PhD in History from the University of Virginia (2015) and an MA in International Relations from Yale University (2007). He has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. At SMU, Evan developed “The United States and Latin America” collective memory project, an ongoing oral history project on U.S.-Latin American relations during the George W. Bush presidency. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., Evan served as a policy fellow in the Department of Homeland Security (2007-2009).
A songwriter and record collector, Evan is always thinking about the relationship between music and its historical contexts. He hosts a radio program on that subject: ‘Music In Time’ which airs monthly on listener-supported WGXC 90.7 FM/Wave Farm in the Hudson River Valley.
