Current Ph.D. Students

Alexis Dale-Huang is a PhD candidate at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies for the 2026–2027 academic year. Alexis’s dissertation project examines why states facing existential security threats vary in their ability to implement change in military strategy, operations, and capabilities, with a regional focus on East Asia. Her other academic research examines developments in Chinese foreign policy and military strategy. During her graduate studies, Alexis has served as a Graduate Fellow at the Princeton Center for International Security Studies and a 2025–2026 Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center. Alexis previously served as a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, where she researched Chinese military affairs and U.S.-China relations. She has a BA from the University of Southern California, an MA in Asian Studies from Georgetown University, and an MA in Public Affairs from Princeton University. She is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

Born and raised in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Agostina is a PhD student in Security Studies at SPIA and a Fulbright Scholar. Her research interests include foreign policy, nuclear policy in the Global South, security policy and militarization in Latin America. Before coming to Princeton, she was Director of Analysis of Geopolitical Transformations at the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs of Argentina where she conducted research and advised on foreign policy.

Her advisor is Miguel A. Centeno and she’s currently working on her dissertation proposal, a project in which she will study how the new roles and missions of the Armed Forces in Latin America are transforming civil-military relations.

She holds an M.A. in International Politics and Economics from Universidad de San Andrés and a B.A. in International Studies from Universidad Torcuato di Tella.

Ned is a researcher working on political economy and decarbonization pathways in China and India. He came to Princeton after his appointment as a non-resident fellow at the Columbia University SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy studying Chinese decarbonization target-setting among provinces and businesses. He previously worked at the economic consultancy Analysis Group in Boston within the energy and finance practice areas. He hopes to build a career as a policy researcher and practitioner supporting decarbonization policy in Asia.

Catrina is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Security Studies cluster focusing on irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and quantitative methods. She is also an associate fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and a member of the editorial board for the Irregular Warfare Initiative. She was the 2021 counterterrorism fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. Catrina has previously conducted research at the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Middle East and North Africa Office, and the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins. She also served for two years in AmeriCorps as a refugee resettlement caseworker in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Catrina holds a B.A. with honors in history, with a concentration in military history, from the University of Chicago and an M.A. with honors in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Evan is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy program. He previously completed his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a second major in environmental studies, where he engaged in research through the university’s Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the intersection of modeling and emerging technologies for waste valorization in complex chemical processes and supply chains. He later had the opportunity to complete a policy-focused research internship in Washington, D.C., through the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) program. He is driven toward science policy questions surrounding the roles of emerging technologies in broader societal challenges, and is interested in how researchers can use large scale, integrated modeling frameworks to study the economic, environmental, and social implications of the technology’s adoption and its place within existing policy environments. Outside of his primary research interests, Evan is a cellist and also enjoys movies and exploring new places.