Risa Brooks holds her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at San Diego and is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. Brooks has also served as a post-doctoral fellow at CISAC, a Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and an affiliate at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Brooks’s research focuses on civil-military relations, military effectiveness, Middle East politics, and terrorist organizations. In her most recent work, she has begun to apply her broad expertise in these areas to examining the determinants of terrorist groups’ strategic choices. In addition to the many articles and book chapters she has published, Brooks authored Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Political-Military Relations and the Stability of Arab Regimes (Adelphi paper 324, Oxford University Press, 1998), and served as editor (with Elizabeth Stanley) of Creating Military Power: the Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press, 2007).