Vanda Felbab-Brown defended her doctoral dissertation in October 2006 (the degree was formally awarded in February 2007). Specializing in security studies and U.S. foreign policy, she is currently a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and a nonresident research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Her doctoral dissertation and her forthcoming book, "Shooting Up: The Impact of Illicit Substances on Military Conflict," examine how the production and trafficking of drugs and the emergence of other illicit economies fuel military conflict. They also assess alternative government responses. Contrary to the conventional view, belligerents’ involvement in the illicit economies brings them not only financial profits, but also, crucially, political capital and freedom of action. The studies specify conditions that influence the size and scope the belligerents derive from illicit economies. The analysis challenges prevailing policies and the conventional toward the drug-conflict nexus, showing that eradication during military conflict tends to be counterproductive for government efforts to defeat the belligerents. The work examines the nexus between illicit economies and military conflict in the cases of Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan, Turkey, India, and Northern Ireland. Her recent research also investigates the emerging illicit economies in Iraq and Lebanon.
Felbab-Brown’s op-eds have appeared in numerous newspapers and she is a frequent commentator in the media on drugs and other illicit economies.
She graduated from Harvard University in 1999, and was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC before commencing her graduate studies at MIT.
Her awards have included a predoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2005-06); Carroll Wilson Foundation and Energy, Technology, and International Affairs grants; the Harvard Faculty Scholarship; John Harvard Scholarship; Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholarship; and research grants from the Center for European Studies, Harvard University and the Olin Center, Harvard University.