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PhD Candidate Mark Bell's article, "Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy," was a joint winner of the International Studies Association's Patricia Weitsman award for best graduate student paper in security studies. He also presented research at the British International Studies Association Global Nuclear Order Working Group in September, and at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies New Faces Conference in October.

PhD Candidate Fiona Cunningham was awarded a Joint PhD Research Fellowship by the China Confucius Studies Program to spend the 2015-6 academic year researching her dissertation at the Renmin University of China, Beijing. She presented "Assuring Assured Retaliation: China's Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability" (co-authored with Associate Professor of Political Science M. Taylor Fravel) at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and at a public event on U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy Toward China, hosted by the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, both in September. In October, she was a participant in the China-U.S. Young Scholars Dialogue, hosted by the China Institute of International Studies in Qingdao, China.

PhD Candidate Mayumi Fukushima gave a presentation on U.S. and allied preparations for dealing with North Korean military and humanitarian crises to the Evermay Dialogue on Resilient National Responses: Northeast Asian Contingencies co-hosted by the Center for a New American Security, the International Institute of Global Resilience, and S&R Foundation in Washington, D.C., in December.

This summer MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) welcomed two new faculty directors to the MIT-France and MIT-Mexico programs: Patrick Jaillet, the Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Paulo Lozano, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. MISTI faculty directors provide academic oversight and strategic direction to MISTI programs.

MISTI, which sent over 780 students to more than 19 countries last year, welcomes three new staff members to the program. Ekaterina Zabrovskaya, the Editor-in-Chief of Russia Direct, joined MISTI in late November as the new MIT-Russia Program Manager. Zabrovskaya graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, with a B.A. in journalism and earned her Master's degree in political science from Miami University, U.S.A. as a Fulbright scholar. Sarra Shubart and Katie O'Connell joined MISTI earlier this year as program assistants. MISTI also promoted three program managers to Managing Directors: Matt Burt, MIT-Korea Program; Mala Ghosh, MIT-India Program; and Julia Reynolds-Cuellar, MIT-Africa Initiatives. MISTI currently offers teaching, internship and research opportunities in 22 countries, and this IAP over 180 students will travel to 20 countries to teach STEM courses.

PhD Candidate Marika Landau-Wells won the Atlantic Council's After the War short story contest for her story, "Remote Operations." The competition is part of the Council's Art of Future Warfare project to advance thinking and planning about the future of warfare.

In October, Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow Rohan Mukherjee presented "Nuclear Ambiguity and International Status: India in the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, 1962-69" at the Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang is the 2016 recipient of the Best Book Award of the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). He won for his recent book, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era.

PhD Candidate Cullen Nutt was selected as a semifinalist for the Bobby R. Inman Award for Student Scholarship on Intelligence. The University of Texas at Austin Strauss Center publicly recognized his paper, "Chronicle of a Correction Foretold: The Push and Pull of Nuclear Intelligence Detection," and provided a monetary prize.

PhD Candidate Reid Pauly won the Doreen & Jim McElvany "Nonproliferation Challenge"—a competition to find and publish "the most outstanding new thinking in the nonproliferation field" run by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. His winning paper, "Bedeviled by a Paradox: Nitze, Bundy, and an Incipient Nuclear Norm," will be published in an upcoming issue of The Nonproliferation Review, and the award is accompanied by a monetary prize.

In September, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program Barry Posen discussed his book, Restraint, at the Institute for World Politics. In November, he appeared on NPR's "On Point" to discuss ISIS.

PhD Candidate Amanda Rothschild was a joint winner of the Patricia Weitsman Award from the International Studies Association. The award recognizes the best graduate student paper on any aspect of security studies. In October, she presented "Dissent in the Ranks: Humanitarianism and US Foreign Policy" at the joint APSA International Security and Arms Control Section and ISA International Security Studies Section Conference. In September, she presented "'The Truth is All I Want for History:' Standards for Evaluating Historical Research" at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting.

In October, SSP held a special seminar on Capitol Hill entitled "Political Struggles in the Middle East." Professor Roger Petersen, Assistant Professor Rich Nielsen, and Assistant Professor Peter Krause (SSP Research Affiliate, Boston College) shared their views on the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, with Professor Barry Posen moderating.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies Richard Samuels presented in July "Hedging and Hugging: Japan's National Security Strategy" at the University of Duisburg, the Japan Foundation Summer Retreat in Kyoto, and then in September at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Also in July, he served as a panel discussant at the Conference on Global History and the Meiji Restoration at the University of Heidelberg. In August, he briefed General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on East Asian security issues, alongside Associate Professor of Political Science Taylor Fravel and CIS Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow Paul Heer. Also in August, Samuels delivered a memo, "Cooperation with Hedging among NE Asian Allies and Partners," to the National Intelligence Council's workshop on "Prospects for Boosting Cooperation Among Northeast Asian Allies and Partners." In September, he served as a panel discussant on NHK Television's hour-long broadcast, "Global Agenda." In October, he presented "Japan: Grand Strategy and the Future of Northeast Asia" at the U.S. Naval War College. Also in October he served as a panelist at Harvard University Law School for a discussion on Mark Ramseyer's Second Best Justice: The Virtues of Japanese Private Law, and gave a briefing on U.S.-Japan relations to the Kansai Keizai Doyukai at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He presented in July "Disaster and Change in Japan" at the Japan Foundation Summer Retreat in Kyoto and to the University of Pennsylvania Law School in November. Also in November, he gave the keynote address, entitled "Sino-Japanese Relations: Back to the Future?" at the "Globalization of the Sino-Japanese Rivalry" conference in Berlin.

Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning and Director of the Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) Bish Sanyal gave the keynote address, "Cultivating Doubts," at the 50th anniversary celebration of the National Conference of Israeli Planners, held in Beer Sheba. He represented MIT's Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program at the annual conference of Humphrey scholars and practitioners. In October, he chaired a plenary session on urban responses to international migration at the Annual Conference of Association of American Planning Schools. With support from CIS, he ran a multi disciplinary faculty colloquium this fall with Professor Sugata Bose from Harvard on the theme of "Kolkata And the Hinterlands." Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen from Harvard delivered the inaugural lecture.

Associate Professor of Political Science David Singer was appointed to the Board of Directors of the International Political Economy Society (IPES).

SSP alumnus Paul Staniland won the 2015 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize for his book Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Cornell, 2014). The Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding first book in International Relations, Comparative Politics, or Political Economy.

PhD student Meicen Sun spoke at the United Nations Academic Impact Fifth Anniversary conference in New York in November on global citizenship and her experience in transnational small arms control.

SSP alumna Caitlin Talmadge received a Minerva Initiative Grant, U.S. Department of Defense, with colleagues at George Washington University Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, for their project on "Spheres of Influence, Regional Orders, and China's Rise," for 2015-17.

Ford Professor of Political Science Kathleen Thelen's book, Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity, won two awards: the Barrington Moore Award of the American Sociological Association and the Best Book Award of the European Politics and Society section of the American Political Science Association.

Professor of History Elizabeth A. Wood gave a talk at the U.S. Naval Academy in October entitled "The Russian Marlboro Man: Vladimir Putin and the Crisis in Ukraine and Crimea."

PhD candidate Alec Worsnop was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. In addition, he presented "Who Can Keep the Peace" at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies' New Faces Conference in October in Chapel Hill, NC. He also presented "Insurgent Military Effectiveness During the First Indochina War" at the American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in September in San Francisco, CA.

PUBLISHED

PhD Candidate Mark Bell, "Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy" International Security (Summer 2015).

________________"Okay, So What If Iran Does Get Nuclear Weapons" Washington Post Monkey Cage blog, August 20, 2015.

PhD Candidate Fiona S. Cunningham and Associate Professor of Political Science M. Taylor Fravel, "Assuring Assured Retaliation: China's Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability," International Security (Fall 2015).

Associate Professor of Political Science M. Taylor Fravel, "The PLA and National Security Decisionmaking: Insights from China's Territorial and Maritime Disputes," in Philip Saunders and Andrew Scobell, eds., The PLA's Role in National Security Policy-Making (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press 2015, forthcoming).

________________"China's New Military Strategy: 'Winning Informationized Local Wars," China Brief, Vol. 15, No. 13 (June 2015).

PhD candidate Mayumi Fukushima, "Accessing the Diplomatic and Military Archives in Japan" H-Diplo Archive Report, October 16, 2015.

SSP Research Affiliate Kelly M. Greenhill, "Europe Must Deal With the Breeding of Terrorism Within its Borders," New York Times, November 16, 2015.

Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow Rohan Mukherjee, "India's International Development Program," in David M. Malone, C. Raja Mohan, and Srinath Raghavan (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2015).

________________"Meet India's New Nationalists," The Indian Express, October 19, 2015.

Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow Rohan Mukherjee and Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang, "India and the Asian Security Architecture," in Next Generation Perspectives on the Future of Asian Security, Asia Policy Paper Series, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, September 2015.

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science Roger D. Petersen, "In Syria, Politics Can Be More Effective Than Military Action," New York Times, November 17, 2015.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program Barry Posen, "Contain Isis," The Atlantic, November 20, 2015.

PhD candidate Amanda Rothschild, "The Quiet Whistle-Blowers Who Saved Jewish Lives," The Boston Globe, November 1, 2015.

Ford Professor of Political Science Kathleen Thelen (ed.), Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis (co-edited with James Mahoney) (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Professor of History Elizabeth A. Wood (co-authored with William E. Pomeranz, E. Wayne Merry, and Maxim Trudolyubov), Roots of Russia's War in Ukraine (Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Columbia University Press, 2015).