Benoît Pelopidas is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bristol (Global Insecurities Center), an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University and of the European Leadership Network (ELN).
He received his Ph.D. in politics from Sciences Po (Paris) and the University of Geneva; he has been awarded two international prizes for his research, from the International Studies Association and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He also received the Swiss Network for International Studies’ award for best dissertation of the year.
His research focuses on the authority of experts in international security issues, the political uses of nuclear history and memory, renunciation of nuclear weapons as a historical possibility, and French nuclear policies. He has published a co-authored book on foreign policy experts in post-Cold War US and Russia in three languages and scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals including the Nonproliferation Review, the Cambridge Review of International Studies, the European Journal of Social Sciences, Esprit and Critique internationale. He has also published short pieces in English and French in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the San Francisco Chronicle, WMD Junction, Alternatives internationales and Mediapart. This scholarship intends to open or broaden the public debate about nuclear weapons policy and to critically engage with stakeholders of the policy process in the US and Europe. To that effect, he has been engaging with former U. S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Ambassador James E. Goodby and with high level defense officials and civil society in France and the U.K. since 2012.
One of his most recent works is the report ‘Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy’published by Chatham House.
Photograph Copyright: Rod Searcey
