People of the Democratic Statecraft Lab

Todd Sechser

Todd S. Sechser

Professor of Politics, Lab Director

Todd S. Sechser is the Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds Jr. Discovery Professor of Politics; Professor of Public Policy at the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy; and a Senior Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Dr. Sechser’s research interests include coercive diplomacy, emerging technologies, nuclear security, and political violence. He is coauthor of the book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and his research has appeared in academic journals such as International Organization, the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Non-Proliferation Review. His writing on policy issues has been published in media outlets such as the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor, and he regularly consults for several government and military agencies. He is also the director of the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation, a multi-university working group studying the effects of new technologies on international military stability. Dr. Sechser was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a John M. Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, where he wrote an award-winning doctoral dissertation.

Before entering academia, Dr. Sechser worked as a nuclear policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Director

Todd Sechser

Todd S. Sechser

Professor of Politics, Lab Director

Coauthor of Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy

Expertise in international relations, foreign policynuclear securityemerging technologies

Faculty

Dale Copeland

Professor of Politics
Tobias Grossmann

Tobias Grossmann

Associate Professor of Psychology
Harry Harding

Harry Harding

Professor of Public Policy, Batten School
David Leblang

David Leblang

Professor of Politics

Syaru Shirley Lin

Associated Faculty Department of Politics and Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics, Miller Center of Public Affairs
Anne Meng

Anne Meng

Assistant Professor of Politics
John Owen

John M. Owen

Professor of Politics, Department Chair

Mila Versteeg

Professor of Law, UVA School of Law

Kirill Zhirkov

Assistant Professor, Department of Politics

Researchers

Joshua Alley

Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Sowon Park

Graduate Fellow

Justin Schon

Research Affiliate

Luke Shimek

David and Linda Gibson Postdoctoral Fellow in Democracy

Alexis Yang

Doctoral Research Assistant

Lab Support