People

Nicolas Thompson Picture

Nicolas W. Thompson

Associate Professor & SIGS Graduate Director

Contact

Home Campus: Tampa
Office: SOC 360
Telephone: (813) 974-2384
Email: nwt@usf.edu

Links

Bio

Nicolas Thompson joined the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies in 2015 after completing his PhD in Political Science at the University of Oregon. He teaches undergraduate courses on American National Government, the presidency, Congress, and the American Political Tradition, and graduate seminars on American Government and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Dr. Thompson’s research interests lie at the intersection of U.S. domestic politics and the global monetary regime. He has published articles on the Federal Reserve System’s evolution and connections between political regimes and currency crises in New Political Economy and Economics & Politics. His forthcoming book, Imagining the Fed: The Struggle for the Heart of the Federal Reserve System, traces a six decade “struggle for power” among the system’s units, twelve regional reserve banks and a Board of Governors in Washington, DC, which drove frequent reconstitutions of the system’s policy regime. It shows that the technocratic "Fed" we are familiar with today did not emerge until the late 1960s, and its entrenchment was secured by America’s abandonment of its historic commitment to trade dollars for gold.

For more on Dr. Thompson’s teaching and research, please see his website or curriculum vitae.