Brandon Sullivan

Brandon Sullivan (he/him) is a Ph.D. Candidate in political science. His research sits at the intersection of international political economy and international security, focusing on markets, risk, and the politics of global economic governance.” In the 2023–2024 Academic Year, Brandon was an Inaugural Graduate Student Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In 2022, Brandon was also a Summer Fellow with the Civic Action Project (CAP), where worked with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech) as the Strategic Project Fellow for Technology and Innovation. Brandon has also represented the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community internationally, as a technical stakeholder on majority-world issues during the pre-negotiation phases of the United Nations’ Global Digital Compact (GDC). Brandon earned a Bachelor of Science in International Relations from The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 2023, he was recognized with the Department’s Outstanding Achievement in International Relations award for his capstone project, which explored the management of mis/disinformation and state-firm coordination within cyber regime complexes. To learn more about Sullivan’s research and publications, visit his wepage.

In Spring 2025, Brandon received a CISS Summer mini-grant to further his work on his project which examines how banking and finance professionals in the US respond to geopolitical disruptions in global trade, using survey experiments to assess their support for state intervention under varying risk conditions. By investigating the limits of economic pacifism, the study sheds light on how market actors’ preferences shift during times of uncertainty. Learn more in our featured article.

In Spring 2026, Brendan was awarded a summer mini-grant which will support an undergraduate research assistant related to his dissertation project, which examines when financial market actors move from market-based tools of risk management to favoring state intervention under conditions of rising uncertainty. The project uses experiments and qualitative fieldwork as part of a broader dissertation agenda in international political economy and security, focused on the role of financial decision-making in international politics.