Norman Joshua

About

Norman Joshua is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution affiliated with the Hoover History Lab. His scholarship centers on the histories of authoritarianism and civil-military relations in Southeast and East Asia. He was previously the 2023–24 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute.

Joshua’s research focuses in particular on the relationship between historical experiences and the consolidation of authoritarian governance, and the ways in which ideology, legality, and insecurity influence the legitimacy and durability of authoritarian regimes. His current book manuscript, Fashioning Authoritarianism: Militarization in Indonesia, 1930–1965, examines how military intervention in nonmilitary affairs was shaped not only by specific policies—such as the deployment of emergency powers and counterinsurgency strategies—but also by broader social insecurities.

His broader research interests include revolutionary politics, counterinsurgency, intelligence history, labor history, and the political economy of energy. His previous monograph, Pesindo: Pemuda Sosialis Indonesia (2016, in Indonesian), investigates the politics of armed youth groups during the Indonesian Revolution (1945–49).

Joshua earned his PhD in history from Northwestern University, where he was an EDGS (Equality Development and Globalization Studies) Arryman Scholar affiliated with Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and an emerging scholar at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.