American Foreign Policy Series

hosted by Professor John L. Harper


Eliza Gheorghe is Assistant Professor in the International Relations Department at Bilkent University.

She earned a doctorate in International Relations from the University of Oxford (Honors, 2014) and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University on a Fulbright scholarship (Honors, 2010). In 2013-2014, she was a George L. Abernethy predoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, where she worked under the supervision of Professor John Harper. Gheorghe has held research fellowships at the Institute for Peace Science and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Yale University, Harvard Kennedy School, Cornell University, and Université Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne. Her research was also funded by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the University of Vienna, and the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.

Gheorghe is the recipient of the International Fellowship for Outstanding Researchers (2019-2022) from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) for her project The Globalization of the Atom: Nuclear Trade and the Spread of Atomic Weapons. She is one of the winners of the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Science. Her research focuses on nuclear proliferation and the evolution of the nuclear market; questions of grand strategy and nuclear alliances; nuclear dominoes; and illicit trade and trafficking networks.

Her work has been published in International Security, International History Review, European Review of History, Cold War History, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and by Palgrave Macmillan, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

Gheorghe currently teaches International Relations, International Security, and Nuclear Proliferation and International Politics at Bilkent University.