Westad studerte ved Universitetet i Oslo og University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Han ble forskningsdirektør ved Det norske Nobelinstitutt og førsteamanuensis i historie ved Universitetet i Oslo i 1991. I 1998 ble han tilknyttet International History Department ved LSE, der han også virket ved LSE Asia Research Centre før han ble avdelingsleder i 2003.[7]
Holtsmark, S. G., Neumann, I. B., Westad, O. A. (eds), The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945-89, 1994 (Palgrave Macmillan) ISBN 0-333-60230-7
The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations During the Carter Years, 1997 (Aschehoug AS) ISBN 82-00-37671-0
Westad, O. A. (ed), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1963, 1998 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) ISBN 0-8047-3485-2
Westad, O. A. (ed), Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, 2000 (Routledge) ISBN 0-7146-8120-2
Kang, G. H., Moon, C. Y., Westad, O. A. (eds), Ending the Cold War in Korea: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives, 2001 (Seoul: Yonsei University Press) ISBN 89-7141-563-0
Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1945-1950, 2003 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) ISBN 0-8047-4478-5
Beginnings of the End: How the Cold War Crumbled, in Pons, S., Romero, F., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, 2005 (London: Frank Cass) ISBN 0-203-00609-7 (hardback) ISBN 0-7146-8486-4 (paperback)
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 2006 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) ISBN 0-521-85364-8 ; French translation: La Guerre froide globale. Le tiers-monde, les Etats-Unis et l'URSS, 1945-1991 (Paris, Payot, 2007)
Quinn-Judge, S., Westad, O. A. (eds), The Third Indochina War, 2006 (Routledge) ISBN 0-415-39058-3
Roberts, J., Westad O. A., The New Penguin History of the World, 2007 (Penguin) ISBN 978-0-14-103042-5
Villaume, P., Westad, O. A. (eds), Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations and the Cold War, 1965-1985 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010) ISBN 978-87-635-2588-6
Leffler, M. P., Westad, O.A. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. (New York: Basic Books, 2012). ISBN 9780465019335.
^Science, London School of Economics and Political. «Professor Odd Arne Westad». London School of Economics and Political Science (på engelsk). Besøkt 19. mars 2022. «Former Distinguished Professor in International History (1998-2015). Odd Arne Westad is an expert on the history of the Cold War era and on contemporary international affairs. He was born in Norway in 1960. He studied history, philosophy and modern languages at the University of Oslo and received his PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Westad served for seven years as Director of Research at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University and New York University.»