Bio
Kerry Chávez is a new assistant professor at the Air Force Academy, a nonresident research fellow with the Institute for Global Affairs, and an advisor for Project Air and Space Power at the Irregular Warfare Initiative. She was previously a two-time nonresident fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point. Her research on the politics, strategies, and emerging technologies of modern warfare and international security has been published in several venues. As a quantitative scholar, she has two novel datasets collected to examine new questions and conventional ones at greater resolution. Military Operations with Novel Strategic Technologies in r (MONSTr) offers a comprehensive list of U.S. military operations from 1989 to 2021 featuring the means of force used, geocoded locations, combatant rosters, and information on structural dependencies between events within campaigns and wars. Her dataset on violent nonstate actor drone adoption has received international attention and is considered a cornerstone in understanding quantitative trends on this phenomenon. She regularly partners with policymaking, private industry, and security provider groups to socially contextualize and empirically ground efforts to stay on the leading edge of emerging threats.
Education
PhD, Political Science, Texas Tech University, Texas (2022)
MA, Political Science, Texas Tech University, Texas (2017)
MLitt, International Security Studies, University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2011)
BA, Intercultural Studies, Biola University, California (2009)
Professional Experience
Assistant Professor, Department of Military & Strategic Studies, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado (2024 – present)
Nonresident Research Fellow, Institute for Global Affairs, New York (2024 – present)
Nonresident Research Fellow, Modern War Institute at West Point, New York (2022 – 2024)
Instructor, Department of Political Science, Texas Tech University, Texas (2022 – 2024)
Projects Director, Peace, War, & Social Conflict Laboratory, Texas (2022 – 2024)
Research and Scholarly Interests
International security, conflict processes, innovation, emerging technologies (UxS, AI, cyber, space), domestic politics of war, violent nonstate actors.
Publications
Articles
2024. “US Military Intervention and Presidential Framing.” Journal of Politics 86(4): forthcoming.
2023. “Emulating Underdogs: Tactical Drones in the Russia-Ukraine War.” Contemporary Security Policy 44(4): 592-605. (with Ori Swed)
2023. “A Wiki-based Dataset of Military Operations with Novel Strategic Technologies (MONSTr).” International Interactions: 639-688. (with J Andrés Gannon)
2023. “The Empirical Determinants of Violent Nonstate Actor Drone Adoption.” Armed Forces & Society: 1-30. (with Ori Swed)
2022. “International Crisis Termination and Presidential Approval.” Foreign Policy Analysis 18(3): 1-26. (with James Wright)
2022. “Conflict Contagion Via Weapons Proliferation Out of Collapsed States.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 35(2): 191-227. (with Ori Swed)
2021. “The Proliferation of Drones to Violent Nonstate Actors.” Defence Studies 21(1): 1-24. (with Ori Swed)
2020. “Off the Shelf: The Violent Nonstate Actor Drone Threat.” Air & Space Power Journal 34(3): 29-43. (with Ori Swed)
2020. “Domestic Political Consequences of International Rivalry.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 64(4): 703-728. (with Daehee Bak and Toby Rider)
Monographs and Chapters
2024 (forthcoming). “Autonomous Weapons.” In Oxford Handbook on Global Security and Change in Armed Conflict. Edited by Annette Idler and Kate Tkacova.
2024. “Violent Nonstate Exploitation of Commercial Drones.” In The De Gruyter Handbook on Drone Warfare. Edited by James Patton Rogers. (with Ori Swed)
2023. UAS in Urban Attacks: Red Teaming Exercise Report. Vienna, AT: weTHINK.
2021. “Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Threat of Democratized Artificial Intelligence.” In Towards an International Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence, 177-194. Edited by Tugrul Keskin and Ryan David Kiggins. Switzerland: Springer / Palgrave Macmillan. (with Ori Swed)
Policy Commentary
2024. “A Case Study on Integrating Tactical Drones: Israel.” Modern War Institute. (with Ori Swed)
2023. “Uncovering the Hidden Logic of War: Data and the Meso-level of Armed Conflict.” Modern War Institute. (with J Andrés Gannon)
2023. “How Hamas Innovated with Drones to Operate Like an Army.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (with Ori Swed)
2023. “Hamstrung: Sources of and Solutions for Political-Military Mismatch.” Modern War Institute. (with J Andrés Gannon)
2023. “Learning on the Fly: Drones in the Russian-Ukrainian War.” Arms Control Today 53(1): 6-11.
2022. “Weak States and Loose Arms: Lessons and Warnings, From Afghanistan to Ukraine.” War on the Rocks. (with Ori Swed)
2020. “An Allegory of the Cave: Innovation and Terrorist Drones.” War Room. (with Ori Swed)