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Leslie Rogne Schumacher, PhD, FRSA, FRHistS is a scholar of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. He currently serves at Harvard University as an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School and as an Associate in the History Department. In addition, he holds positions at Cornell University, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Great Books Summer Program at Haverford College. He is a frequent lecturer in the Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies, a part of the Wharton School and the SAS at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Schumacher previously served as the Director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence at Wells College and has held fellowships at Harvard University, the University of London, and as the David H. Burton Fellow at Saint Joseph’s University. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) for his civic engagement on refugee affairs. In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) in recognition of his book, The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain: Democracy and Diplomacy, Orientalism and Empire (2023).

Schumacher’s past and current work engages: great powers in international relations, imperial and national rivalry in the Mediterranean and Middle East; migration and refugee studies; the EU’s history and future, British and US foreign affairs; and the place of middle and emerging powers in the international system. A selection of his published research includes works on: the military, political, and cultural sources of European integration theory; British-Greek relations; the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; the future of BRICS+ in the Mediterranean Sea; and the legal framework dictating European migration patterns in the 19th-century Mediterranean. 

He has two current book projects. First, a brief study on transnational nationalism in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Libya, titled A Strong and Brilliant Universe: Transnational Nationalism in the Mediterranean Sea—Origins and Aftermaths. Second, an exploration of Mediterranean port/customs facilities, borderland biopolitics, and the legacy of pre-WWII nationalism in present-day cross-sea migration, titled Bathing in Crests of Foam: A Study of the Modern Mediterranean in Five Parts.

Schumacher is a frequent contributor to political and public debate on foreign affairs, international relations, and international organizations and agencies. In addition to his policy analysis as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at FPRI, he has written for such venues as War on the Rocks, History News Network, and the New Islander. A leader in the competitive debating world, he teaches several topics courses on the history, practice, and purpose of debate as a component of civil discourse.