Bruno Cardoso Reis

Bruno Cardoso Reis is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. He is a professor of global history, geostrategy, and international relations at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, where he has been director of the doctoral program in history, defense, and security studies, in partnership with the Portuguese Military Academy. He was also deputy director of the Center for International Studies in Lisbon. He is a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Department of Government, where he was a FLAD Guest Professor. He has worked in think tanks—namely at the Institute for International and Strategic Studies in the context of EuroMeSCO, and at the National Defence Institute in Lisbon. 

He was a special advisor to the Portuguese minister of defense, with a special focus on military transformation and the Portuguese presidency of the European Union (EU). In that role, he contributed to several non-papers and coordinated academic engagement efforts for the Strategic Compass, the EU’s first defense strategy document. He was named to a board of experts appointed by the prime minister to revise Portugal’s national security strategy and was also appointed to coordinate the first Portuguese maritime security strategy. 

Cardoso Reis has published in Portuguese, English, and occasionally in French and Spanish. In English, he has served as editor for “Portuguese Foreign Policy and Crisis Diplomacy in a Period of German Hegemony: Band-wagoning or Soft Balancing?” (Routledge, 2023) and has been published by Real Instituto Elcano, The Journal of Cold War Studies, The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces, and more. 

He has significant media experience as a regular commentator on international politics on the news channel SIC Notícias and as a weekly columnist and podcaster for Observador. He has occasionally collaborated with international media, namely Radio France Internationale, Euronews, and STV. 

His research has sought to combine the historical and the topical, academic and public policy relevance. Topics of interest include the history of empires, decolonization, and current relations between Europe and the Global South; the history and current politics of European integration with a focus on Southern Europe; NATO and European defense; relations between Europe and the United States; irregular, asymmetric, and grey zone warfare; military strategy and transformation; and maritime security with a focus on the Atlantic. 

He holds a doctorate in war studies from King’s College London, a master of philosophy in historical studies from the University of Cambridge, and a bachelor’s and master’s in contemporary history from the University of Lisbon. He has received the Vítor de Sá Prize for Contemporary History and the Aristides de Sousa Mendes Prize for International Relations. He has chaired the international relations section of the Portuguese Political Science Association and is a board member of the Military History Consortium.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

Affiliations:

• Military History Consortium, board member