Thank you to everyone who helped us welcome our 2025 Edgar S. Furniss Winner Fiona Cunningham, whose book Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025) was selected by our Furniss Book Award Committee. 

The Edgar S. Furniss Book Award commemorates the founding director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. The award is conferred on a first book in English that makes an exceptional contribution to the understanding of international, national, and/or human security.

Members of this year’s Furniss Book Award selection committee included Geoffrey Parker, Theodora Dragostinova, Dima Arzyutov, and Haifeng Huang. They considered more than a dozen monographs and evaluated each for original research, persuasive interpretation, theoretical contribution, and implications for policy or practice. Ultimately, they chose Cunningham’s Under the Nuclear Shadow because they found it a “particularly compelling,” “well-researched study on an important topic,” with a “powerful argument.” 

“A sophisticated, highly original interpretation of China’s unique contemporary deterrence strategies, based on ambitious research including interviews with numerous Chinese stakeholders, which uses the notion of “strategic substitution” to explain the country’s security choices today.” Furniss Book Award Committee on "Under the Nuclear Shadow"

Cunningham’s visit to Ohio State began with the selection committee. Along with Mershon Center Director Mitch Lerner, Lydia Walker, and Christopher Otter, the committee celebrated Cunningham’s award with a dinner Wednesday night. 

On Thursday morning, Cunningham met with sixteen graduate students for a mentoring conversation guided by student questions. She then met over lunch with Mershoners Chris White, Erin Lin, Alexander Thompson, Aidan Milliff, Jennifer Mitzen and William Favell. 

Next, her presentation on Thursday afternoon covered nine distinct areas:

• The Limited War Dilemma
• Strategic Substitution
• Information-Age Weapons
• A Theory of Strategic Substitution
• Research Design & Sources
• China’s Decision-Making
• Evaluation
• Contributions & Implications
• Current Research Agenda

Her discussion of her unique strategic substitution theory and review of her sources were particular highlights. Cunningham also shared her current research agenda, which includes extensions of Under the Nuclear Shadow such as China’s nuclear modernization and cultural heritage as leverage, and the question of whether China will propose new rules to regulate the use and spread of advanced technologies with military applications. A lively and insightful Q&A session followed her presentation. In all, the winning selection and the conversation and ideas it generated honored our founder and the award named in his memory.