Nan Tian is a Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, where he is responsible for monitoring and managing the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. His research interests focus on the causes and impact of military expenditure and civil war. He previously worked at the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as an economist on climate change and was a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, South Africa where he also got his Ph.D. in Economics from.