Svetla Ben-Itzhak

Dr. Svetla Ben-Itzhak is an Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations and the Deputy Director of the West Space Scholars Program at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS in Washington, D.C. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kansas and also completed doctoral work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with disciplinary specialization in both International Relations and American Politics. 

Ben-Itzhak’s current research explores issues in space security, space theory, strategic alliances in space politics, and the quantitative assessment of space power capabilities. In particular, she is working on mapping current and past power configurations in space politics, including cislunar space and beyond, to project their long-term implications for conventional international relations on the ground and in space. Within this general theme, she is completing a book on Space Security, contracted with the MIT press, and developing a quantitative database on space power capabilities (SPOC). In addition, Ben-Itzhak has ongoing research projects that test the predictive power of leading IR theories against observed outcomes at the systemic, state, and individual levels of analysis, and projects that further explore the connection between poverty/relative deprivation and political instability/conflict, as uncovered by findings reported in her dissertation.

Ben-Itzhak has over 15 years of teaching experience in academia. More recently, she developed and taught professional military education (PME) courses on International Security and the Space Domain and Space Regional Strategic Studies, as well as graduate electives at Johns Hopkins on Space Security and Space Policy. Earlier in her academic career, she taught classes on Global Security Threats/International Relations, US Politics, Comparative Politics, and Applied Linguistics.

Her scholarly work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Peace Research, Astropolitics, Space Policy, the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, and the International Journal of Education. She has also contributed book chapters to the Routledge Handbook of Space Policy and 21st Century Political Science. Her general audience writing has appeared in various outlets including the SAIS Review of International Affairs, The Washington Post, Australian Outlook, and 360info, with her work for The Conversation translated into dozens of languages and read by over 440,000 readers worldwide. Ben-Itzhak has been interviewed by NPR, BBC World News, The Economist, Nature, Scientific American, Forbes, Bloomberg, Sky News, Newsweek, Politico, The Guardian, Deutsche Welle/PBS, Canadian Public Radio, Australia’s National ABC Radio, the Conversation weekly podcast, and TRT World UK/Turkey broadcast, among others. 

Ben-Itzhak has served as a reviewer for journals and institutions including Aerospace, Space Policy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the RAND Corporation, MIT Press, Sage, Routledge, Cengage, and other academic publishers. She has presented numerous papers at major conferences, including the JHU Applied Physics Lab’s Cislunar Security Conference, the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, the International Astronautical Congress, ESSCA Space Policy Workshop, and the Space Workshop on Teaching Space. A polyglot, she incorporates into her work original research published in other languages.

Ben-Itzhak and team won the competitive 2023-2025 DOD Minerva/DECUR grant to study "Multi-stakeholder Regime Formation: The Case of Cislunar Space". 

Ben-Itzhak has served as the main research advisor to numerous Senior Level PME students who have written on various topics including orbital debris, NATO space capabilities, security cooperation in space, responsible space systems architecture, and a number of other space security issues. She has co-authored several articles with her students.

Ben-Itzhak received Instructor of the Year Award (2024-2025) from the US Space Force PME based on research, teaching, and service excellence.