The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP) was founded in 2011 with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Recognizing that today's toughest nuclear challenges have deep roots in the past, NPIHP is dedicated to building an integrated international history of nuclear weapons proliferation — one that moves beyond the East vs. West paradigm of the Cold War to recover the full complexity of how nuclear weapons spread across the globe.
NPIHP is a global network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of nuclear history through archival documents, oral history interviews and other empirical sources. Its research spans programs and crises across six continents, shedding new light on the decisions, miscalculations and domestic pressures that drove states to pursue, or abandon, nuclear weapons. Past scholarship has examined Soviet nuclear assistance to China, India's and Pakistan's parallel programs, Brazil's nuclear ambitions, the Euromissiles crisis, and the role of civil society in nuclear risk reduction, among many other topics. NPIHP's working paper series and research updates make this leading-edge archival scholarship accessible to a broad audience of historians, policy analysts and the public.
NPIHP is now home at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where it joins the newly established Global Policy Institute (GPI) alongside sister projects including the Cold War International History Project and the History and Public Policy Program. This move brings together, under one roof, complementary efforts to illuminate the historical foundations of today's most pressing international challenges. At UMD, NPIHP will continue to fill in the blank and blurry pages of nuclear history and ensure that robust scholarship and effective policy decisions are informed by the full international record, not just the view from Washington or Moscow.