Zaynab Quadri is a Henry Chauncey Jr. '57 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. She received her PhD in American studies from George Washington University.

Quadri's forthcoming book manuscript, Empire by Contract: The Political Economy of the Post-1945 U.S. Security State (under advance contract with Columbia University Press), historicizes the role of private military contracting in projecting U.S. military and state power in the world during the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research has been published in American Quarterly and the Journal of Transnational American Studies and has been supported by the Institute of Citizens & Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.