Nicola Leveringhaus

Dr Nicola Leveringhaus (MPhil, DPhil, Oxon) is Reader in International Relations in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She specialises in military and security developments in Northeast Asia, especially related to nuclear weapons and China. She is currently a Research Affiliate of Nuclear Knowledges, CERI, Sciences Po and board member of BASIC’s NPT Monitor and NUTRI Advisory Board. She is also a co-lead on the Nuclear Deterrence Network, together with the University of Leicester and RUSI in the UK. 

Previously, she was part of the Beyond Nuclear Deterrence network at Harvard University from 2023 to 2025. Dr Leveringhaus lectured at Sheffield University (2015-16) and prior to this, was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2012-15) and Stipendiary Lecturer in International Relations (Trinity College, 2014-15) at Oxford University working on nuclear responsibility. During her studies at Oxford, she was funded by a full scholarship from the British Inter-University China Centre. She has been a Senior Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China; and Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. 

Her second book China and Global Nuclear Order, from Estrangement to Active Engagement (Oxford University Press) was nominated for the 2017 ECPR Hedley Bull Prize. Beyond Chinese strategic military power, Dr Leveringhaus has broader interests in strategic stability across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. From June 2026, Dr Leveringhaus will be leading a research team to study global nuclear weapons commemoration, part of her five-year ERC funded project NUCLEAR ECHOES.

China, nuclear weapons, stategic stability and nuclear weapons commemoration

(2025) The Domestic Politics behind China’s Strategic Force Improvements’ in Navigating the New Nuclear Map, Texas National Security Review, 8(4), 29 September 2025. 

(2024). From rejection to reliance: nuclear deterrence in Chinese declaratory policy. The Nonproliferation Review, 31(4–6), 257–275. 

(2023) How China’s Nuclear Past Shapes the Present: Ideological and Diplomatic Considerations in Nuclear Deterrence, in Modernizing Deterrence: How China Coerces, Compels, and Deters, ed. Roy D. Kamphausen (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research).

(2022) How China learned to love the bomb, Engelsberg Ideas, December.

(2022) Chinese Nuclear Force Modernization and Doctrinal Change for Institut Français des Relations Internationales, France in 2022.

(2018) with Professor Kate Sullivan de Estrada (Oxford), Between Conformity and Innovation: China’s and India’s Quest for Status as Responsible Nuclear Powers, Review of International Studies.

(2015) China and Global Nuclear Order, from estrangement to active engagement (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

(2014) with Astrid Nordin and Shaun Breslin, eds., Chinese Politics and International Relations: Innovation and Invention (London: Routledge).