Associate Professor Benoît Pelopidas is the founding director of the “Nuclear Knowledges” program at Sciences Po (CERI) in Paris (formerly known as the “Chair of excellence in security studies” (2016-9)).

Nuclear Knowledges is the first scholarly research program in France on the nuclear phenomenon which refuses funding from stakeholders of the nuclear weapons enterprise or from antinuclear activists in order to problematize conflicts of interest and their effects on knowledge production. It offers conceptual innovation and unearths untapped primary sources worldwide to grasp nuclear vulnerabilities and rethink possibilities in the realm of nuclear weapons policies.

Benoît has been awarded three international prizes for his research on the scoping of publicly available nuclear choices and the most prestigious scholarly grants in Europe (including one from the European Research Council).

Since 2019, Nuclear Knowledges has hosted PhD students on global nuclear politics and history and secured two two-year Marie Curie fellowships from the European Commission.

Over the last decade, he has been engaging with policy making elites in the US, Europe and New Zealand as well as civil society groups to reconnect democracy, intergenerational justice and nuclear policy and support innovative arms control and nuclear disarmament policies.

Publications are available at www.sciencespo.fr/nk/en and https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/nuclear/