Fiona Cunningham Session Overview

Fiona Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Perry World House and affiliated with the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology and conflict, with an empirical focus on China. Fiona’s current book project explains how and why China threatens to use space weapons, cyber attacks and conventional missiles as substitutes for nuclear threats in limited wars. Her research has been published in International Security, Security Studies, The Texas National Security Review, and The Washington Quarterly, and has been featured in the New York Times and the Economist. Fiona has held fellowships at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2019 to 2021, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She is a research affiliate at the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy and Defence Program at the U.S. Studies Centre, University of Sydney.