CNS Staff List

Listings of all CNS staff with areas of expertise, contact information, biographies, and recent publications.
Updated: Feb 29, 2012

Jessica C. Varnum

NTI Project Manager and Research Associate

Jessica C. Varnum, NTI Project Manager

Activities

Jessica C. Varnum is the NTI Project Manager and a Research Associate at CNS. Varnum manages all of CNS's work for the Nuclear Threat Initiative website, including extensive research databases on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their delivery systems, educational resources, country profiles, and issue briefs. She also contributes research to a number of CNS projects, focusing particularly on Turkey, and the role of U.S./NATO extended deterrence commitments in Turkish national security policies.

Varnum is also an Adjunct Professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where she currently teaches two classes in the MA Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies program that educate students on the science and technology dimensions of nuclear policymaking:

  • IPOL8675: Seminar: The Nuclear Renaissance and Nonproliferation 
(Spring 2011, with Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress)
  • Seminar: Science, Technology and Nuclear Policymaking 
(Fall 2011)

Ms. Varnum frequently presents her research at conferences and guest lectures, and is a participant in the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation, a collaborative project between CNS and Georgia Tech to promote international scholarship on issues of strategic stability under deeply reduced or eliminated nuclear arsenals. Her work has appeared in The Nonproliferation Review and The International Herald Tribune.

Background

She has worked at CNS since 2006. She previously interned for the Center for Strategic and International Studies through the support of the Anne Armstrong Leadership Award, at the Atlantic Council of the United States, and with U.S. Senators Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe. Ms. Varnum received a UC IGCC Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Summer Seminar Fellowship (2008), and the award for "Most Outstanding Paper" at the 2007 Women in International Security Summer Symposium in Washington, DC. She is proficient in French.

Education

  • M.A. in international policy studies with a certificate in nonproliferation studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies
  • B.A. in government and international studies, summa cum laude, from Colby College

Bibliography

  • "Turkey in Transition: Toward or Away from Nuclear Weapons?" Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century: A Comparative Perspective, Stanford University Press (2010).
  • "Political Survival and Nuclear Proliferation: Reviewing Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East," The Nonproliferation Review, July 2008.
  • "Heading Off Ankara's Nuclear Temptation," with Jon B. Wolfsthal, The International Herald Tribune, August 10, 2006.
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