Dr Francesca Giovannini is the Executive Director of the Harvard Belfer Center Initiative on Managing the Atom, the Harvard research hub devoted to the study of risks posed by nuclear technology, its military use and its governance challenges. Dr Giovannini is part of the Faculty of the Fletcher School at Tufts University where she teaches courses on technology and national security and nuclear deterrence strategies.
Previously, she served as Strategy and Policy Advisor to the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, as Director of Global Security and International Affairs at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Specialist at the United Nations Regional Headquarter in Beirut, Lebanon.
Her research interests include challenges to multilateral nuclear arms control, prospects for regional nuclear cooperation, the future of verification of arms control agreements in an age of disinformation. A recipient of the Rotary World Peace Fellowship, she earned two Master Degrees at the University of California Berkeley, and a Doctorate from the University of Oxford exploring the rise of regional nuclear institutions in a time of great powers competition.
Dr Giovannini speaks fluently three languages and she is an assiduous traveller and amateur photographer.