PEOPLE

PhD candidate Fiona Cunningham presented “Seizing the Initiative or Controlling Escalation? China's Changing Approach to Cyber Deterrence” in February at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. In April, she gave a talk on the same topic at the Cyber Security Project seminar series at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Cunningham also attended a conference in March on “U.S.-China Relations: Cyber and Technology” organized by the Hoover Institution National Security, Technology and Law Working Group at Stanford University. She plans to join the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School as a predoctoral fellow next year.

PhD candidate Mayumi Fukushima won a 2017 Smith Richardson Foundation World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship.

PhD candidate Marika Landau-Wells presented two papers at the annual ISA conference in Baltimore, “High Stakes and Low Bars: International Recognition of Governments during Civil War” and “Bringing the First Image Back In: An Exposition of Threat-Heuristic Theory.” She also presented “Disaggregating Danger: Preferences for Immigration Reform in the United States” at the annual Midwest Political Science Association conference in Chicago. In April, she was invited by The Future Society to discuss neuroscience and the future of conflict.

CIS Visiting Scholar Shin-wha Lee, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University, and UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Group member of the Peacebuilding Fund was a discussant at the Starr Forum on “Solving America’s and China’s North Korea Problem” in April. Also in April, she presented on “China’s Refugee Policy Divide and the Predicament on North Korean Defectors” at the Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration.

PhD candidate Renato Lima de Oliveira presented “Petrobras: Innovation with Party Rent-seeking” in April at the Fourth Repal Conference and at the annual Latin American Studies Association meeting in Lima, Peru. Also in April, MIT News featured his dissertation research in a story called “Grounded in Geology.”

Professor of Political Science Kenneth Oye's Program on Emerging Technology (PoET) worked with groups in Japan, the Netherlands, Yale, Harvard and MIT on assessment of technical measures intended to localize effects of gene drives and to limit fitness and reduce gene flow of genetically engineered micro-organisms.  Kenneth Oye presented PoET work on biotechnology policy to governmental groups including the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the International Experts Group on Biosecurity and Biosafety Regulation, and the Netherlands Ministry of Mines and Environment (RIVM)  and to academic audiences ranging from humanists at the Harvard STS Circle and the Leiden Lorentz Center to biological engineers at Northwestern University, BU, MIT and HKUST.

PhD candidate Philip Martin presented two papers at the annual ISA conference in Baltimore: “The Wartime Origins of Civil-Military Relations in Insurgent-Ruled States” and “Unsafe Havens: Re-examining Humanitarian Aid and Peace Duration after Civil Wars” (with Nina McMurry). 

Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow Lourdes Melgar taught a seminar at MIT on “Energy Policy in the Context of Climate Change” during IAP. In February, she delivered a talk on “Mexico’s Energy Reform: Foundations, Implementations and Challenges Ahead” at the MIT Energy Initiative. In March, she spoke at the Atlantic Council on “The Future of US-Mexican Energy Relations”, was a panelist in the Bipartisan Policy Center discussion on “Expanding North American Energy Trade”, and attended the annual meeting of The Trilateral Commission as a member. In April, Melgar was a speaker at the 22nd Brookings Energy Security Round Table, gave a talk on “Social Sustainability in Mexico’s Energy Reform” at the LAWG, and delivered a talk on Mexico’s political and economic reality sponsored by MISTI. In May, she will be a keynote speaker at the Latinas in the U.S. Conference, as well as at the CITI 2017 Global Energy and Utilities Conference. In July, she will be attending the Aspen Institute 2017 Energy Policy Forum.

PhD candidate Andrew Miller was awarded a Project Launch Grant by the University of Notre Dame’s Global Religion Research Initiative, an MIT GOV/LAB Research Seed Grant, and a CIS Summer Research Grant. In February, he presented two papers, “State versus Syndicate: Civilian Compliance in Contested Territory” and “Treaty Compliance through Assurance: Evidence from the International Criminal Court” at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore.

PhD candidate Kacie Miura presented “Protecting Business from Politics: Explaining Variation in Nationalist Protests in China” in January at a conference on “State-Mobilized Contention” organized by Harvard University and Hong Kong University. She presented the same paper, as well as “Campaign Rhetoric and Chinese Reactions to New Leaders” (with Jessica Chen Weiss) at the annual ISA conference in Baltimore.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Richard Nielsen was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

PhD candidate Cullen Nutt presented “What Do Leaders Ask of Intelligence?
Theorizing Policymaker Demand for Intelligence During Crises” and “Seek, And Ye Shall Find: The Dynamic Effects of Previous Failure on Detecting Nuclear Programs” at the annual ISA conference in Baltimore in February.

PhD candidate Rachel Esplin Odell presented “Maritime Hegemony and the Fiction of the Free Sea: Explaining States' Claims to Maritime Jurisdiction” in April at a Junior Scholar Symposium at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in Baltimore.

PhD candidate Reid Pauly presented “Nuclear Weapons in Wargames: Testing Elite Traditions and Taboos” in February at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore. He also won a Smith Richardson Foundation World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship to support his dissertation research. He plans to join the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a predoctoral fellow next year. 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Barry Posen spoke on “Restraint and the New Administration,” to the Strategy Discussion Group in Washington DC in January. In February, he presented a Work in Progress Seminar, A Multipolar World and the Management of Civil War, at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He spoke on the same topic at “The Responsibility to Protect” conference at Yale University in March. He also presented a keynote address on his book, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy, at the Conference on Grand Strategy held at Yale University. Posen was awarded the MIT Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies Richard J. Samuels received a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation to support his field research in Japan and to work on his book project on the history of the Japanese intelligence community. In February, he delivered the Bradley Richardson Memorial Lecture at Ohio State University on the topic of “Japanese Foreign and Security Policy.” He spoke in March at Middlebury College on the security and energy policy consequences of the March 2011 triple catastrophe in northeastern Japan. Also in March, he presented “Japanese Technonationalism Viewed through the ‘Wayback Machine’” at a conference on “The U.S.-Japan Bilateral Economic Relationship: Past, Present, and Future” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

CIS Security Studies Fellow Jayita Sarkar presented on “The Stakeholders Inside: Explaining India’s Relationship with Israel and France,” with Nicolas Blarel at the annual ISA conference in Baltimore in February. In April, she spoke on “Incongruities in the Indian Nuclear Narrative” at the “New Nuclear Imaginaries” conference at Harvard University’s Program on Science, Technology and Society.

Associate Professor of Political Science David Singer was the inaugural recipient of the MIT Change Maker Award for “challenging harmful attitudes, languages, and behaviors, and shifting the culture that perpetuates sexual violence.” Singer chairs MIT’s Presidential Committee on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response.

PhD student Rachel Tecott presented “The Double-Edged Legacy of Obamawar” at the Naval Air Systems Command Leadership Development Program in April at the Navy Supply School on Naval Station Newport. 

Senior Research Associate Jim Walsh spoke on the Iran nuclear deal and the nuclear nonproliferation regime at the World Affairs Council of the Charlotte Board & Community Leaders and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as well as the Atlantic Council in January. He also spoke at the AAAS in February and testified before the House Oversight Committee in April. He gave talks on North Korea at the Center for Arms Control and Disarmament and to members of the House and Senate, and at the Korean Economic Institute. He also gave talks at MIT Lincoln Labs on “The Nuclear Weapon’s Agenda for the Next Four Years” and on “Cross-domain Deterrence & Sanctions” at the University of California, Berkeley. 

PhD candidate Ketian Zhang plans to join the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center as a predoctoral fellow next year.

PUBLISHED

Associate Professor of Political Science Taylor Fravel, “Threading the Needle: The South China Sea Disputes and U.S.-China Relations,” in Robert Ross and Øystein Tsunjo, eds., Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China: Power and Politics in East Asia, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, June 2017.

Research affiliate Professor Stacie Goddard, “Hiding in Plain Sight? The Not-So-Secret Constructivism of Relationalism,” Symposium for International Studies Quarterly, April 2017.

Eric Heginbotham, China’s Evolving Nuclear Deterrent: Major Drivers and Issues for the United States, lead author, RAND Report, 2017.

______ (with Richard J. Samuels), “Smartening Up Japan’s Defenses,” Nikkei Asian Review (web), January 26, 2017.

CIS Visiting Scholar Professor Shin-wha Lee, “Conflict-Refugee Dynamics: African Refugees as Humanitarian Crisis and Security Threats,” 21st Century Political Science Review, Vol 27, No. 1, March 2017.

______ “Complex Geopolitics of Population, Migration, and Refugee Security: Implication for the Korean Peninsula,” Asiatic Review, Vol. 60, No. 1, April 2017.

______ (co-edited with Ku Hyun Jung), The Wave of Grand Transformation and Korea’s Strategic Choice, Seoul: Cloud Nine Publisher, 2017. 

Stanton Fellow Joseph O’Mahoney, "Trump says that spoils belong to the victor. That’s an invitation to more war", Monkey Cage at The Washington Post, 1 February 2017.

______ "Making The Real: Rhetorical Adduction and the Bangladesh Liberation War'', International Organization, Online Firstview.

Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow Lourdes Melgar, “Mexico´s Upstream Opening: Redefining the Oil and Gas Landscape”, in Oxford Energy Forum, Oxford, UK: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, June 2017.

______ “Consideraciones para entender la Revolución Energética Mexicana” in El Nuevo Modelo Energético Mexicano, Villahermosa, Tabasco: Fondo Editorial Universitario UJAT, Forthcoming.

Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang, “Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 41, No. 3, Winter 2016/2017.

______(with SSP alumna Caitlyn Talmadge), “Civil-Military Pathologies and Defeat in War: Tests Using New Data,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Online Firstview.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Richard Nielsen (with Gary King and Christopher Lucas), “The Balance-Sample Size Frontier in Matching Methods for Causal Inference,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 61, No. 2, April 2017.

Ford International Professor of Political Science Barry Posen, “Syria Showdown: Will Trump be Pressured into Putting Turkey First, America Second?” The National Interest, March 16, 2017.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies Richard J. Samuels (with Mike M. Mochizuki), “Japan’s Energy Security: Strategic Discourse and Domestic Politics,” chapter in Mike M. Mochizuki and Deepa Ollapally (eds.), Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2017.

CIS Security Studies Fellow Jayita Sarkar, “Managing Nuclear Risk in South Asia: An Indian Response,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Global Forum Feature, Vol. 73, No. 1, January 2017.

Ford International Professor of Political Science Ben Ross Schneider (with Armando Castelar Pinheiro), “Markets and Hierarchies in Social Services: Incentives, Institutions, and Politics,” In Guillermo Perry and Ramona Angelescu, eds., Improving Access and Quality of Public Services in Latin America. New York: Palgrave, 2017.

PhD student Meicen Sun, “A Bigger Bang for a Bigger Buck: What China's Changing Attitude Toward UN Peacekeeping Says About Its Evolving Approach to International Institutions," Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2017.

PhD student Rachel Tecott, “The Double-Edged Legacy of Obamawar,” War on the Rocks, February 2017.

Senior Research Associate Jim Walsh, “Are Sanctions on North Korea Having an Impact? Perspectives from Washington and Cambridge,” Washington: Korea Economic Institute, 2017, pp. 1-26.

______ “Assessing the Iran Deal,” Written Testimony. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security, U.S. House of Representatives. April 5, 2017, pp. 1-12.

______ “Will Trump’s America be a Nation of Ugly Self-Interest and Ignorance?” USA Today. January 29, 2017.

______ (with Thomas Pickering), “Guess Who We Don’t Talk About These Days? Iran,” Charlotte Observer, January 15, 2017.