Prior to joining ifri, Laurence Nardon was a research analyst at Aérospatiale (now EADS Space Transportation), then at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).  She was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC from 2001 to 2003.

Laurence Nardon holds a Ph.D. in political science from Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.  She studied at the University of Kent at Canterbury, after graduating from Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Her dissertation on "Space Observation as an Instrument of Power in International Relations, the U.S. and their Observation Satellites, 1955-1985" received the highest marks in 1999. It was published in 2001 by Presses du Septentrion.

In the Fall of 2000, she was a Post-Doc Fulbright Scholar at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.