Welcome! My name is Peyman Asadzade. I am a Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative and a former Postdoctoral Fellow with the School’s Managing the Atom project (2023–2024). I was also a USIP Peace and Security Scholar during 2021-2022.

I study the micro-level foundations of high-stakes security politics -the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of citizens and elites that both shape and are reshaped by state decisions on defense priorities, deterrence, and the use of force. Bridging comparative politics and international security, my work draws on original surveys, experiments, elite interviews, and archival research to analyze how security policy preferences form, evolve, and interact with strategic decision-making. My book project, Debating the Bomb, examines how nuclear weapons in Iran shifted from a political taboo to a contested and increasingly mainstream issue. It shows how civil society activism, elite discourse, and periods of heightened security tension have worked together to challenge long-standing restraints and redefine the boundaries of acceptable nuclear policy.

My articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Foreign Policy Analysis, Research & Politics, International Interactions, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Nations & Nationalism. I have also written articles for the Monkey Cage of the Washington Post, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Middle East Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Online Exclusives of the Journal of Democracy. I served as replication analyst at the Journal of Politics during 2021-2022. I am also the recipient of the 2022 Palmer Prize from the Peace Science Society (International).