Literary Awards

John Andreas Olsen is a professor at the Swedish Defence University, where he serves as Head of the Department of War Studies. He retired from the Royal Norwegian Air Force in 2025 with the rank of colonel after thirty-eight years of service. His final assignment was at NATO HQ in Brussels, where he led and contributed to NATO’s Net Assessments and published Routledge Handbook of NATO for the Alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

Professor Olsen is as Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, member of the RUSI Journal editorial board, and advisory board member of the U.S. Air University’s Æther: A Journal of Airpower and Spacepower.

Colonel Olsens’ previous assignments include service as Norwegian Defence Attaché to the United Kingdom and Ireland; Director of Security Analyses in the Norwegian Ministry of Defence; Deputy Commander and Chief of the NATO Advisory Team at NATO Headquarters, Sarajevo; and Dean of the Norwegian Defence University College. Olsen is a graduate of the German Command and Staff College and has served both as liaison officer to the German Operational Command in Potsdam and as military assistant to the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin. He has a doctorate in history and international relations from De Montfort University, a master’s degree in contemporary literature from the University of Warwick and a master’s degree in English from the University of Trondheim.