Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University and a Non-resident Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Specializing in issues of conflict and national security, she received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Her forthcoming book, Shooting Up: Illicit Economies and Military Conflict, analyzes the relationship between military conflict and illicit economies, such as the production and trafficking of narcotics. With key implications for counterinsurgency strategies, her work challenges the conventional narcoguerrilla theory and shows that belligerent groups’ exploitation of illicit economies increases not only their financial resources, but also their political capital from local populations. She has been exploring these dynamics in the cases of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Columbia, Peru – countries in which she has carried out fieldwork -- and also in the cases of India, Turkey, and Northern Ireland. The project has been supported by several grants. Her doctoral dissertation on illicit economies and military conflict received the APSA 2007 Harold D. Laswell Award for the best dissertation in the field of public policy.

Dr. Felbab-Brown is the author of numerous policy and peer-review academic articles, including “From Sanctuaries to Protostates,” in Michael Innes, ed. Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safehavens (Westport: Praeger, 2007); “Opium Wars,” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2007; “Kicking the Opium Habit? Afghanistan’s Drug Economy and Politics Since the 1980s,” Journal of Conflict, Security, and Development, Summer 2006; “Endangering Species: Poppies to Songbirds,” International Herald Tribune, March 24, 2006; “The Coca Connection: Conflict and Drugs in Colombia and Peru,” Journal of Conflict Studies, Winter 2005; “The Intersection of Terrorism and the Drug Trade,” in James J.F. Forest, The Making of a Terrorist (Westport: Praeger, 2005); and “Afghanistan: When Counternarcotics Undermine Counterterrorism,” Washington Quarterly, Fall 2005. She is a frequent commentator in the media on these issues.

During 2006-07, Dr. Felbab-Brown was a Brookings Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. She held several predoctoral fellowships, including at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government.