About the Author

Dr. Chris Ferrero is the sole founder and manager of US-Iran-Relations.com. He is a visiting professor at the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

Dr. Ferrero earned his PhD in 2011 from the University of Virginia. His dissertation (The Iran Narrative: Ideas, Discourse, and Domestic Politics in the Making of US Foreign Policy toward Iran, 1990-2003) examines the extent to which portrayals of Iran as a fanatical terrorist state have increased the political costs and reduced the normative desirability to senior decisionmakers of pursuing forward-leaning policies of engagement with the Islamic Republic when external conditions have appeared to favor rapprochement.

Dr. Ferrero earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science (Magna Cum Laude) from Villanova University in 2001. He received Villanova’s 2001 Political Science Medallion as the top-ranked graduate in political science, as well as the St. Augustine Award for Academic Excellence in the Liberal Arts. While at Villanova, he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa (Liberal Arts and Sciences) and Pi Sigma Alpha (Political Science) national honor societies. He was a Fulbright Finalist in 2001.

Upon completion of his undergraduate education, Dr. Ferrero proceeded directly to the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He earned a Master of Arts degree with Honors in National Security Studies in May 2003. He worked for the United States Department of State for sixteen months while studying at Georgetown. Upon completion of his Master of Arts, he worked for three years as a consultant to the United States Department of Defense with the firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Dr. Ferrero taught an advanced undergraduate seminar on US-Iran relations at the University of Virginia in Fall 2010. While at Seton Hall, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on US Involvement in the Middle East, US Foreign Policy, Comparative Foreign Policy, International Relations Theory, and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.

Dr. Ferrero earned intermediate-level language certification in Persian/Farsi at the University of California-Berkeley in the summer of 2007.