Odd Arne Westad FBA (born, Aalesund, 5 January 1960) is a Norwegian historian specialising in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history.
After studying as an undergraduate at the University of Oslo, Westad attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to work on his Ph.D under Professor Michael H. Hunt. He was appointed Director of Research at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Oslo in 1991. In 1998, he left Oslo to join the International History Department at the LSE, where he also worked in the LSE Asia Research Centre before becoming Head of Department 2004-2007.[1]
Westad is currently Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and co-director of LSE IDEAS, the LSE's centre for international affairs, diplomacy and strategy, together with Professor Michael Cox. Westad speaks and writes in a number of languages, including his native Norwegian, English, French, German, Mandarin and Russian. He is a very well known lecturer in several countries, both on history and on contemporary international affairs, especially with regard to China and East Asia.
Westad's book, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, won the 2006 Bancroft Prize, the Michael Harrington Prize of the American Political Science Association, and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Award for the best book published in the last two years on international affairs .
Westad is the editor of the University of North Carolina Press's book series on the Cold War and founding editor of the journal Cold War History.[1]
As well as his work at the London School of Economics, Westad has held Visiting Fellowships at Cambridge University, Hong Kong University and New York University. He has received major grants for research from the British Arts and Humanities Research Board and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He also worked as the International Coordinator of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Advisory Group on Declassification and Archival Access.[2]. In 2011 he was nominated for president of the American Historical Association.
Westad has published thirteen books on international history and contemporary international affairs, including an updated version of The New Penguin History of the World. He is a co-editor of the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War, with Professor Melvyn Leffler of the University of Virginia.[1], published in 2010. His new book, on the history of Chinese foreign affairs since 1750, will be published in 2012.
He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2011.[3]