Alex Roland, History
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- Education:
Ph.D. Duke University 1974 M.A. University of Hawaii, Manoa 1970 B.S. United States Naval Academy 1966
- Research Interests:
Current projects: Separate from my scholarship and teaching, I am a student and critic of the United States civilian space program. I spent eight stimulating and rewarding years (1973-1981) as a historian with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but I have come to believe that the agency lost its way after the Apollo program. I have written extensively on this topic. My other extracurricular activities include running, tennis, mystery and historical novels, and occasional sailing when I can find my way to the sea.
I study military history and the history of technology. My focus has ranged over all of Western experience, and I have recently converted my undergraduate course in military history to a comparative world military history course. I have written about chariots in the second millennium B.C., Greek fire in medieval Byzantium, and computers and aerospace technology in the twentieth century. While I study the history of technology in general, I also focus on the ways in which technology has shaped war and war has altered technology.
- Recent Publications
(More Publications)
- Roland, A. "Technology and warfare." Metode Science Studies Journal 15.8 (December, 2025): e30508-e30508. [doi] [abs]
- Roland, A. ":Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America." Isis 116.3 (September, 2025): 619-620. [doi]
- Roland, A. "Da Vinci Medal Address: A Centrifugal Maelstrom?." Technology and culture 65.4 (January, 2024): 1349-1360. [doi] [abs]
- Roland, A. Delta of Power The Military-Industrial Complex. JHU Press, August, 2021. 304 pages pp. [abs]
- Roland, A. "Is military technology deterministic?." Vulcan 7.1 (January, 2020): 19-33. [doi] [abs]