Beenish Pervaiz

Beenish Pervaiz is a postdoctoral fellow in Technology and International Security at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), based in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on nuclear deterrence and strategy, nonproliferation policy, and the drivers of nuclear force expansion in regional settings, including South Asia. She examines how third-party relationships and alliance politics shape nuclear force structure and trajectories of vertical proliferation, with implications for strategic stability.

Beenish received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University in 2025 and holds a Master’s in International Policy Studies from Stanford University. Before joining IGCC, she was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy in MIT’s Security Studies Program and a Predoctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Her research has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Minerva Peace and Security Scholar Fellowship and Brown University’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia. She has also contributed to international security policy through roles with the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.

Plans for Fellowship: During the fellowship, Beenish will focus on finalizing data collection and preparing the manuscript for her book project. She also plans to continue working on articles related to arms racing among interconnected nuclear dyads, cross-domain escalation risks, and the future of nonproliferation and export controls in a more fragmented nuclear order.