Hilde Eliassen Restad

Hilde grew up in the northernmost town in the world, Hammerfest, Norway. At 16, she traveled to New Mexico, USA to attend the United World College of the American West (AHUWC). Hilde has worked as a volunteer in El Salvador, been editor of a political radio show for the University of Oslo’s student radio while obtaining her BA in political science, and traveled around the United States while obtaining her MA and PhD in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. In 2024, she was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin.
Hilde’s research interests cover American politics, U.S. foreign policy, American history and international relations. Her dissertation was on the concept of American exceptionalism understood as an identity, and its effect on history U.S. foreign policy traditions. This was further developed in her first book, American Exceptionalism: An Idea that Made a Nation and Remade the World (2014). Before attaining her position as Associate Professor, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Hilde is often used as an analyst of American politics in Norwegian media.