Sanne Verschuren

Sanne Cornelia J. Verschuren is an Assistant Professor of International Security at the Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, the domestic determinants of security policy, and the role of ideas, norms, and institutions in national security decision-making. She focusses on how states fight war, examining why they construct novel weapon technologies, how they envision fielding such technologies, and why they choose to abandon certain technologies and practices.

Professor Verschuren is in the process of finalizing her first book manuscript, entitled Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons, and Procurement Politics. This book is based on her dissertation, which received APSA’s 2022 Kenneth N. Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award. In the book, she asks why and how states decide to develop different weapon capabilities within a similar military domain—with the development of missile defenses by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India as the central case studies. Other research by Professor Verschuren has appeared in Global Studies Quarterly, War on the Rocks, and Inkstick Media, among others.

Before joining Boston University, Professor Verschuren was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Sciences Po’s Center for International Studies, a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a predoctoral research fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her research has been generously supported by the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Belgian American Education Foundation, the Tobin Project, the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, and the Brown Graduate School.

Professor Verschuren’s areas of expertise include international security, the development and diffusion of military technology, strategic thinking, the intersection between nuclear and conventional capabilities, and the linkages between national security and climate change. You can find more information about Sanne Verschuren’s work on her personal website.