Home>Benoît Pelopidas
Benoît Pelopidas
Full Professor, HDR
Center for International Studies (CERI)
Research Interest(s): Global nuclear history, French nuclear history, the role of expertise in the field of international security, construction, legitimation and contestation of the nuclear knowledge, the Anthropocene, international political theory (democracy in the nuclear age), memory and memorialization of nuclear events, oral history
Discipline(s): Political Science
Subdiscipline(s): International Relations
Research Group(s): Art, humanities, and international research; International order, foreign policy, diplomacy; Environmental risks and planetary limits; Science, technology and power; Security, defence, nuclear weapons; Violence, war and peace
Geographical Area(s): Global realm
Language(s): French, English, Spanish
Biography
Benoît Pelopidas is Full Professor and the founding director of the Nuclear Knowledges program at the Center for International Studies, Sciences Po, Paris. Nuclear Knowledges is the first scholarly research program in France on the nuclear phenomenon (Google Scholar) which refuses funding from stakeholders of the nuclear weapons enterprise or from antinuclear activists in order to problematize conflicts of interest and their effect on knowledge production. The program mobilizes interdisciplinary methods to become able to assess accepted claims about nuclear realities and explore how possible nuclear futures are scoped and connected to other existential risks. Benoît is an affiliate to CISAC at Stanford University and has been a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
The Nuclear Knowledges program has received funding from the European Research Council, the French National Research Agency, the French Ministry of Education – Chaire d’excellence –, the European Commission through the Marie Curie postdoctoral schemes and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The team’s scholarship has received six international awards.
Teaching
Sciences Po
• Dilemmas of a nuclear-armed world, college (licence)
• Security in a Nuclear-Armed World, PSIA (master)
publications
Main publications
Repenser les choix nucléaires. La séduction de l’impossible. Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2022, 308p. [Rethinking nuclear weapons whoices. The seduction of the impossible. Foreword by David Holloway].
Nuclear France. New Questions, New Sources, New Findings. London: Routledge, 2024 [sole editor].
“The Tragedy Trap. On the Tragicized Politics of Armed Drones and Nuclear Weapons”, Ethics & International Affairs, 38:2, 2024, pp. 209-231 [with Neil Renic].
“The False Promise of Nuclear Risk Reduction ”, [with Kjølv Egeland], International Affairs, 100:1, January 2024, pp. 345-360.
“Writing IR after COVID-19. Reassessing political possibilities, good faith and policy relevant scholarship on climate change mitigation and nuclear disarmament” [with Sanne C. J. Verschuren], Global Studies Quarterly, 3:1, January 2023.
“No such thing as a free donation. Research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis”, International Relations, 39:1, March 2025 [with Kjølv Egeland].
“Imaginer la possibilité de la guerre nucléaire pour y faire face. Le rôle de la culture populaire visuelle de 1950 à nos jours”, Cultures & Conflits, n° 123/124 - Fall/Winter 2021 pp. 173-212.
“European nuclear weapons. Zombie debates and nuclear realities”, European Security, 30:2, 2021, pp.237-258 [with Kjølv Egeland].
“Unfit for purpose. Reassessing the development and deployment of French Nuclear Weapons (1956-1974)”, Cold War History, 21(3), August 2021, pp. 243-260 [with Sébastien Philippe].
“The unbearable lightness of luck. Three sources of overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear crises”, European Journal of International Security, 2:2, July 2017, pp. 240-262.
“The birth of nuclear eternity” in Jenny Andersson and Sandra Kemp (eds), Futures: interdisciplinary perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 484-500.
See all publications on Sciences Po Institutional Repository