About Me

Mai’a Keapuolani Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern University. She is an international relations expert, with a focus on international and transnational cooperation, especially in the European region. She holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University.  She has previously held tenure-track professorships at Colgate University and the University of Southern California, and was Senior Researcher at the Arena Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, 2012-2018.

Professor Cross is the author of three books and the co-editor of two books (one in press).  Her second book, Security Integration in Europe: How Knowledge-based Networks are Transforming the European Union (University of Michigan Press, 2011) is the winner of the 2012 Best Book Prize in European Studies.  Her most recent book is The Politics of Crisis in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Beyond these major projects, she has also written over 40 articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics related to her core research interests, including intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism, public diplomacy, smart power, and international cooperation in outer space exploration.

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Professor Cross holds numerous national and international appointments and affiliations. Primarily, she is Editor of the Journal of European Integration and Series Editor of Palgrave’s series on International Relations. She is also Senior Visiting Fellow at the Clingendael Institute in the Hague, affiliate at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, and serves on the editorial boards of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, European Security, Palgrave Macmillan’s Series in Global Public Diplomacy.  Most recently, Professor Cross was elected to the History Committee of the International Astronautical Congress.  She has also been a 2009 Fulbright Fellow in European Union Studies, Visiting Fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris, and 2016 Nobel Fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute where she contributed to the Nobel Symposium.  From 2014 to 2019, she was appointed Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Contact: m.cross@northeastern.edu