I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations and a Deterrence Futures Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. I was previously a Stanton Nuclear Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, where I was affiliated with the Security Studies Program. While I have a variety of research interests, my work primarily concerns the causes and consequences of states' military procurement choices and the effect of these choices on alliance politics. I am especially interested in the way that procurement choices relate to issues of nuclear strategy and the role that status and prestige concerns play in shaping military force postures.
Having done my doctoral work at the University of Oxford and my undergraduate and master's work at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, I always try to connect my research to areas of policy import, but I attempt to do so in a way that speaks to audience beyond just DC. Thus, much of my empirical research draws heavily on cases from Europe and East Asia, and I am of course especially interested in British security policy.
In addition to my academic studies, I have worked at the British Embassy to the US, served on the editorial board of the Georgetown Security Studies Review, and worked as a Summer Associate and Adjunct Researcher at the RAND Corporation. My work has appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Contemporary Security Policy, Washington Quarterly, and Foreign Affairs, and I also regularly publish on my Substack page, Entirely Academic Observations.
Areas of Expertise
Nuclear Weapons
Alliance Politics
Military Strategy
International status seeking
Publications
Samuel M. Seitz and Elliot S. Ji, "When competition becomes contagious: Strategic arms racing spillovers, alliance politics, and the Sino-American nuclear competition," Journal of Strategic Studies (2025), https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2025.2543859.
Samuel Seitz and Lauren Sukin, "Deemphasizing Nuclear Weapons in Nuclear Deterrence: The Case for Conventional Counterforce," Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 8, vol. 1 (2025):15-35.
Samuel M. Seitz, "Letting sleeping bears lie: Ukraine’s cautious approach to uncertainty before the war," Contemporary Security Policy (2023): 530-543.
Samuel Seitz & Caitlin Talmadge, "The Predictable Hazards of Unpredictability: Why Madman Behavior Doesn’t Work," The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 3 (2020): 31-46.
