ANU researcher awarded US Peace grant

Dr Maria Rost Rublee is the first researcher from the College of Art and Social Sciences to be granted a United States Institute for Peace (USIP) grant.

The $119,000 grant will fund a research project, led by Dr Rublee from the School of Politics and International Relations, on nuclear norms in global governance.

The USIP grant program supports peace building projects managed by non-profit organizations including educational institutions, research institutions, and civil society organizations. Each year USIP selects 20-25 grants to fund out of over 250 applications from around the world.

Dr Rublee is working with Professor Avner Cohen of the Monterey Institute for International Studies on the project, which will examine the role of norms in global interactions. As part of the project they will develop a framework for employing norms to help understand and shape international policies related to nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear energy.

“The influence of norms on global nuclear governance has been neglected, and receiving a USIP grant is recognition that this is a very serious peace-related topic worth supporting,” says Dr Rublee.

The two-year project has two parts: The first part is an international conference to bring together experts to discuss nuclear norms, with a publication of an edited book on their findings.

“The conference will bring together 15 of the best experts in the world currently working in the area of nuclear nonproliferation,” says Dr Rublee.

The project’s second element is a series of briefings for policy-makers in Washington, D.C; Vienna, Austria; and Canberra.

“We will brief the policy community on our findings about what can be done to harness the power of norms to strengthen nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.”

Dr Rublee specialises in international security and international relations theory, with regional emphases on East Asia and the Middle East. In particular, she studies the way norms and ideas shape the way that state elites perceive "security" and "success".

Dr Rublee completed both her MPhil and PhD in Political Science from George Washington University, where she specialised in international security and international relations theory.

Her current research focus is nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Dr Rublee’s book, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint, won an international book prize, the Alexander George Book Award for best book in political psychology. Nonproliferation Norms has also received positive reviews in 14 journals, including Foreign Affairs. In it, she examines nuclear weapons decision-making in five countries – Japan, Egypt, Libya, Germany and Sweden. She concludes that the international social environment created by the nuclear nonproliferation regime was a key factor in all these states’ construction of what “security” is and thus their nuclear policy.