Listings of all CNS staff with areas of expertise, contact information, biographies, and recent publications.

Updated: Mar 23, 2011

Dr. Benoît Pelopidas

Benoît Pelopidas is the Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies for the year 2010/2011 and adjunct faculty at the Graduate School for International Policy and Management (MIIS). He has a Ph. D. in political science from Sciences Po (Paris) and the University of Geneva and a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Geneva (thesis rated 6/6). From 2005 to 2008, he was awarded a three year doctoral grant from the French Ministry of Defence. In 2009, He was awarded a full grant from the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research.

His 2009 essay was distinguished by the Swiss Political Science Review; in 2010, he won the outstanding student essay prize from the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Essay Competition and in 2011, he was awarded the "Best Graduate Paper 2010" from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. Also in 2011 he won the SNIS Award 2010 for the Best Thesis in International Studies from the Swiss Network for International Studies.

His current work focuses on international relations theory, the role of experts in defense and security policy with an emphasis on nuclear weapons proliferation and disarmament and the role of history in the framing of policy choices.

His work has been published in edited books and the Swiss Political Science Review, Défense nationale et sécurité collective, Esprit, les Cahiers européens de Sciences Po, La revue des deux mondes, and The Nonproliferation Review.

He published When Empire Meets Nationalism. Power Politics in the US and Russia (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2009; co-authored with Didier Chaudet and Florent Parmentier) enriched version of an original work in French (Geneva, Droz, 2007), then translated in Romanian (Chisinau, Cartier, 2008), with a Russian translation forthcoming in 2011.

A book based on his dissertation is forthcoming in the fall 2011 in French by Sciences Po University Press.