Mehdi Isse is a PhD candidate in Security Studies at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. His research examines nuclear strategy, coercive diplomacy, and grand strategy, with a focus on how states respond to proliferation crises and other high-stakes security challenges.

His work combines quantitative and qualitative methods, including original dataset construction, regression analysis, and theory-driven case studies, to explain variation in strategic decision-making. He is particularly interested in drawing credible inferences from limited or imperfect data using small-N designs and empirically grounded approaches.

His research has been presented at venues including the Alva Myrdal Center at Uppsala University, the Midwest Political Science Association, Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, Yale’s MacMillan Center, and the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow at Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies and has received support from PIIRS, SPIA, and the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination.

For 2025–2026, he is a Nuclear Security Program Resident Fellow at Yale University’s MacMillan Center. His dissertation examines counterproliferation strategy in proliferation crises. He will be on the academic job market in Fall 2026.