Sarah Erickson

Sarah Erickson is a PhD student at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. Her research interests include the outer space-nuclear security nexus, impacts of emerging space technology on international security as well as the development of global space policies and strategies. Erickson is a research assistant for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) where she served as the substantive consultant to the Secretariat of the 2024 Group of Governmental Experts on further practical measures for preventing an arms race in outer space. She is also the project lead for the Institute’s Space Security Portal. 

Erickson was a 2021 recipient of the IAEA Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship which supported her nuclear nonproliferation education and was a 2019 recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship under which she worked at the Perm National Research Polytechnic University in Perm, Russia. She has worked with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Russian Center for Policy Research (PIR Center) and the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation. 

She graduated with a dual degree M.A. from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in WMD Nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy and Global Security where her thesis focused on the political aspects of preventing an arms race in outer space. Erickson also received her M.A. in Russian Linguistics, Literature, and Language as well as her B.A. in Linguistics and Russian from the University of Arizona.