Miriam Barnum completed her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC). Her research is focused on understanding the motivations and constraints that shape states’ arming choices. In her book project, she examines the role that internal security threats play in driving choices between nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons pursuit options. Other ongoing projects relate to arming choices more generally, international conflict, and nonproliferation and arms control, with a focus on applying computational measurement models to enhance our understanding of these substantive areas.

While pursuing her Ph.D., Miriam was a US-Asia Grand Strategy predoctoral fellow at USC's Korean Studies Institute, and Director of Data Science for the Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab. Before coming to USC, she worked as a research assistant in the National Security Office at Los Alamos National Laboratory.