Nicola Leveringhaus

Nicola Leveringhaus did her undergraduate degree in International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Aberystwyth from 1999 to 2002. During her undergraduate studies she spent four months at the University of Southern California, studying International Relations as an exchange student. After Aberystwyth, Nicola went to the London School of Economics and Political Science to study an MSc in International Relations from 2002 and 2003. Soon afterwards, Nicola started a Research Fellowship at King’s College London, where she worked on nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia. At Aber, LSE and King’s, Nicola developed a strong interest and background in the study of nuclear weapons and Asian security.

In 2006, Nicola began to study Chinese at the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College) completing an MPhil with distinction in Modern Chinese Studies, and subsequently a DPhil in International Relations, both generously funded by the ESRC’s British Inter-University China Centre (BICC). Throughout her doctoral studies, Nicola conducted extensive research abroad, primarily in China, as a visiting senior scholar at the Arms Control Centre at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 2010-11; and in the United States, as a pre-doctoral fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) in Monterey, California. In both places, Nicola made use of historical archives and conducted interviews for her research on China and nuclear weapons. At CNS, Nicola designed and taught a graduate course on Chinese nuclear weapons policy.

After completing her doctoral studies in early 2012, Nicola was appointed a Junior Research Fellow working for Professor Andrew Hurrell on rising powers and the global governance of nuclear weapons at the University of Oxford. During the Junior Research Fellowship, Nicola was awarded a three-year British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship, also based at Oxford. As part of this fellowship, Nicola developed her research on China and the concept of nuclear responsibility. She was also a Stipendiary Lecturer in International Relations at Trinity College in Oxford, where she taught Chinese politics and International Relations. In February 2015, Nicola’s first monograph was published on China and Global Nuclear Order, with Oxford University Press. In September 2015, Nicola joined the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in International Politics.