Dr Nicola Leveringhaus is Senior Lecturer in East Asian Security and International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Dr Leveringhaus specialises in nuclear weapons issues in Northeast Asia, especially related to China. She has lectured at Sheffield University (2015-16) and was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2012-15) at the University of Oxford. She has been a Senior Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University; and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. She holds an MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies and DPhil in International Relations from St. Antony's College, Oxford.

In the study of China’s foreign affairs, historians often emphasize the enduring influence of the past on the present. While events like the 'Century of Humiliation' in the nineteenth century and the struggle against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s are frequently cited, another historic development - China's development of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s - is often overlooked. In contrast to many other nuclear weapons states, China has historically remained reticent about its nuclear past. Only in the last years of former leader Hu Jintao (2003-2012) and now the current leader, Xi Jinping (2013-), has China started to commemorate its nuclear weapons development more seriously. This talk, in cooperation with the International Relations and Security research cluster, seeks to explore the reasons behind this change in commemorative practices within China and its broader implications for regional and international security. Ultimately, it is argued that under Xi Jinping, China's nuclear past is finally becoming present.