Colleen Larkin

Colleen Larkin is a postdoctoral fellow in technology and international security at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), based in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Her research explores strategic narratives, military doctrine, and nuclear politics, with a focus on nuclear strategy. In her book project, she examines the evolution of U.S. nuclear strategy and the politics of strategic change. She highlights the role of strategic narratives in shaping ideas about deterrence and nuclear war, drawing on archival research and text analysis to locate the roots of these narratives in competition between national security elites. Her work has been published in the European Journal of International Security. Previously, she was a predoctoral fellow with the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She received a B.A. in political science and mathematics from Wellesley College.

Plans for Fellowship: Colleen will turn her dissertation into a book manuscript and produce several articles related to the project. She will also continue work on an ongoing co-authored project examining the relationship between advances in precision technology, norms of warfare, and military doctrine. In the next phase of the project, she will begin designing a survey and conducting interviews to study elite decision-making and escalation dynamics associated with tactical, low-yield nuclear weapons.