Peyman Asadzade

Peyman Asadzade is a Fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He studies regime security, the domestic sources of foreign policy, public opinion, and development under authoritarianism, with a regional focus on Iran and the broader Middle East.

His book project examines this question through the paradox of higher education expansion in post-revolutionary Iran. The Islamic Republic's massive investment in university access advanced its state-building and development goals -- and at the same time remade the country's social structure, generated new political identities, and altered patterns of political participation. The project traces how a state's developmental achievements can become sources of political challenge, and what this reveals about legitimacy and resilience under authoritarianism.

His research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and other academic outlets. His policy and public scholarship have appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Washington Post, and the Journal of Democracy's online platform. He previously served as a Peace and Security Scholar Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and as a replication analyst for the Journal of Politics.