We are a collaboration of mathematicians and historians from the Universities of York and York St John, with interests spanning 20th century international and military history, operations research, and historical and contemporary warfare analysis. Current collaborative research topics include the Battle of the Atlantic, Operation Sea Lion, Vietnam, nuclear deterrence (including the 1983 Able Archer scare), and inter-war gaming, especially of naval aviation. Our blog is

Weighing the Fog of War.


Our book Quantifying Counterfactual Military History is now published!

We will be hosting the Historical Analysis for Defence and Security Symposium at York in 2024.

Dr Brennen Fagan
is a mathematical and statistical modeller who did his PhD with YHWAG. He is now a postdoc at York's Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, while maintaining his interests in modelling warfare.

Dr Ian Horwood
is a historian at York St John University. His principal interests are in US military history, airpower history, and the wars in Indochina.

Professor Niall MacKay
is a mathematician and theoretical physicist at the University of York. He has interests in military history, operations research and combat modelling.

Dr Christopher Price
is a historian at York St John University. His main areas of interest are financial, economic and military history in the twentieth century, especially the inter-war period.

Professor A Jamie Wood
is a mathematician and systems biologist at the University of York. He specializes in the simulation and analysis of complex systems, and has interests across a range of modern international history and the analysis of warfare.


We offer PhD and MSc projects across our full range of interests, for historians and mathematicians. Recent theses include those by Brennen Fagan, Peter Lloyd and Adarsh Bura. The only additional qualification needed is sympathy with the other discipline and an interest in the techniques it can bring to the project. If you're interested, get in touch!



By Coollew. Art by Bruce MacKay.