Nancy Gallagher

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Research Professor; Director, CISSM

Affiliations:

Curriculum Vitae

Nancy Gallagher is the Director at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and a Research Professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. Her current research includes a book project on Strategic Logics for Arms Control; public opinion surveys about security policy in the United States and Iran; initiatives to improve cybersecurity decision-making; and cooperative strategies to reduce nuclear risks.

Before coming to the University of Maryland, Dr. Gallagher was the Executive Director of the Clinton administration's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Task Force and worked with the Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State to build bipartisan support for U.S. ratification. She was an arms control specialist in the State Department, a Foster Fellow in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and a faculty member at Wesleyan University.

Dr. Gallagher is the author of The Politics of Verification (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), and the editor of Arms Control: New Approaches to Theory and Policy (Frank Cass, 1998). She has co-authored three monographs: Comprehensive Nuclear Material Accounting: A Proposal to Reduce Global Nuclear Risk (2014); Reconsidering the Rules for Space Security (2008); and Controlling Dangerous Pathogens (2007). With Iranian and American colleagues, Dr. Gallagher has fielded a series of surveys of Iranian public opinion about the 2015 nuclear deal, domestic politics, and regional security. She has also written numerous policy reports, articles, and op eds. Dr. Gallagher won the University of Maryland’s 2015 Research Communication Impact Award for work on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and the Outstanding Invention of 2016 award for her development, with Charles Harry, of a cybersecurity risk analysis framework.

Areas of Interest

International security; arms control & nonproliferation; nuclear policy; cybersecurity; space security

US-Russian Security Relations

How can the United States and Russia build a more constructive, cooperative international security relationship?

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Nuclear Past, Present and Future

Achieving nuclear security requires fundamental changes in international relationships, the reduction of risks associated with nuclear weapons programs, and new systems to manage and secure civilian nuclear materials and facilities.

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Exploring Multi-Stakeholder Governance

How do multi-stakeholder governance initiatives form? What drives or impedes cross-sector cooperation? And when are multi-stakeholder approaches most effective?

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A Holistic Approach to Cybersecurity Risk Management

Minimizing the most serious forms of cyber attack, espionage, and crime without hindering beneficial uses of information technology requires skillful multi-stakeholder governance.

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Re-evaluating Space Security

Technological and geopolitical developments underscore the need to balance a desire to preserve complete freedom of action and widely accepted governing rules as the basis for space operations.

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Human Security

In today’s security environment, civil conflicts, mass migration, climate change, epidemics, and other emergent phenomena create multiple, often overlapping, instabilities that exacerbate human insecurity.

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Security Cooperation with Iran: Challenges and Opportunities

Improving U.S. and European security policy making toward Iran requires increasing public and official understanding of the concerns and perspectives of Iran’s leaders and citizens.

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Public Opinion on International Policies