Elizabeth A. Stanley, Ph.D., is a professor of security studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Her teaching and research focus primarily on resilience, political psychology, civil-military relations, and international security. She is the award-winning author of Paths to Peace (2009), about the domestic politics of war termination, and the international bestseller Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive during Stress and Recover from Trauma (2019), about the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience (with a forthcoming Ukrainian translation by Vivat Publishing). She is also co-editor of Creating Military Power (2007), about military effectiveness.
She created a resilience training program, Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, tested through four neuroscience studies with U.S. combat troops, and taught internationally to many thousands in high-stress military and civilian environments. She has been collaborating with Ukrainian Catholic University and Forest Glade Veterans Rehabilitation Hospital to bring MMFT to Ukraine. On online version of the MMFT course is being translated for the Ukrainian Catholic University’s online learning platform, where it will be freely available to all Ukrainians.
Earlier in her career, she served as a U.S. Army military intelligence officer in South Korea, Germany, and on two peacekeeping deployments to the Balkans. Her research has been supported by many funders, including the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Wilson Center, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. She holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and MIT, and is also a certified practitioner of Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy.