Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies

Nina Tannenwald is a faculty fellow at the Watson Institute and senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science. She has been a visiting professor at Cornell and Stanford Universities, a Carnegie Scholar, and a MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Fellow in International Peace and Security. In 2012-13 she served as a Franklin Fellow in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation in the US State Department. Prior to coming to Brown, she held fellowships at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She holds a master's degree from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs and a PhD in international relations from Cornell University.​

Professor Tannenwald's research and teaching focuses on the role of international institutions, norms, and ideas in global security issues, efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, and human rights and the laws of war. Her current research assesses how the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian law influence the behavior of states and non-state actors. Her articles have appeared in International Organization, International Security, International Studies Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Ethics and International Affairs, among others.