Peter Gries was born in Singapore and grew up in Hong Kong, Japan, and Beijing, where he attended a Chinese public elementary school and learned to throw hand grenades in sports class. He later earned a B.A. at Middlebury College in Asian Studies, a M.A. in Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Gries is currently the Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair & Director of the Institute for U.S.-China Issues and Professor of International & Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author, most recently, of The Politics of American Foreign Policy: How Ideology Divides Liberals and Conservatives over Foreign Affairs (Stanford University Press, 2014). He is also author of China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (University of California Press, 2005) and co-editor of State and Society in 21st Century China: Crisis, Contention and Legitimation (Routledge, 2004). He studies the political psychology of international affairs.