Skip to main content Skip to footer site map
Political Science Department

Cullen Nutt

Assistant Professor Cullen Nutt teaches International Relations at the U.S. Naval Academy. In his research, he studies states’ decisions to employ secret coercion in international politics, as well as the effectiveness of their efforts. Cullen received his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the Security Studies Program. His dissertation examined the causes of covert action. Why do nations intervene in other states in this way under certain circumstances and not others? Currently, Cullen is revising this work into a book. In other work, he assesses the performance of intelligence agencies in tracking covert nuclear weapons programs and the role of secret threats in winning concessions from defiant regimes. Prior to joining the Political Science Department at the Naval Academy in 2020, he was a U.S. Foreign Policy and International Security Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. Cullen earned an MA from King’s College London in War Studies and a BA from Boston College. His work has been published in Security Studies and Intelligence and National Security. Cullen served as a graduate associate and an adjunct at the RAND Corporation. Before graduate school, he worked as an editor at the Wilson Quarterly in Washington, D.C. Cullen pairs a love of research with a passion for teaching.
go to Top