Mariana Budjeryn

Mariana Budjeryn is a senior research associate with the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She is the author of “Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). Formerly, Budjeryn held appointments as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with MTA, and the International Security Program; a fellow at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies; and as a visiting professor at Tufts University and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.

Budjeryn’s research focuses on the international nonproliferation regime, arms control, nuclear crises, and post-Soviet nuclear history. She leads MTA’s diversity, inclusion, and belonging program, including the Atomic Voices seminar series that provides a forum for marginalized voices and perspectives in the nuclear field, and she is an affiliate of the Davis Center Negotiations Task Force, where she is one of the architects and organizers of ACONA (Arms Control Negotiations Academy), an immersive course in arms control history, technology, and negotiations skills. Budjeryn is a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences.

Her research and analytical contributions appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies, Nonproliferation Review, World Affairs Journal, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, War on the Rocks, Arms Control Today, and in the publications of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she is a global fellow. Budjeryn holds a doctorate in political science and a master’s in international relations from Central European University (formerly) in Budapest, Hungary, and a bachelor’s in political science from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.

Affiliations:

• National Academy of Science, Committee on Arms Control and International Security, member
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, History and Public Policy Program, global fellow
• Arms Control Negotiation Academy, member of curriculum development group
• Nuclear Policy Education Center, member of the Board of Advisors
• Highly NRiched, contributor and mentor