tli_slider
Asmus Fellows gather at Brussels Forum on Friday, March 15th. Recipients of the award, from left to right, are Tomasz Szatkowski of Poland (2013), Merle Maigre of Estonia (2012), Mark Simakovsky of the United States (2012), Nora Fisher Onar of Turkey (2012), and Jesper Pedersen of the United States (2013).
The Asmus Policy Entrepreneur Fellows and their projects:
- Nora Fisher Onar (2012), United States and Turkey – “Toward a New Grand Bargain? Turkey, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Transatlantic Alliance”
Nora Fisher Onar is an assistant professor of international relations at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul and a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies at Oxford. Fisher Onar, has published extensively on Turkey’s evolving relationship with Europe, the United States, and the Middle East in leading academic and policy fora. She has served as a lecturer at Worcester College, Oxford, and a project manager at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). She has a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a DPhil. in international relations from the University of Oxford, where she was a fellow of St. Antony’s College. She also studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Bosphorus University, Istanbul.
- Merle Maigre (2012), Estonia – “Transatlantic Defense Policy: Avoiding European Demilitarization”
Merle Maigre is a policy advisor in the Policy Planning Unit at NATO, a position she has held since 2010. She previously worked as a researcher at the International Centre for Defence Studies in Tallinn, Estonia; as deputy head of the Euro-Atlantic Integration and Security Sector Reform program at the NATO Liaison Office in Kiev, Ukraine; and as head of the NATO bureau in the Estonian Ministry of Defence. Maigre has bachelor’s degrees from Tartu University in Tartu, Estonia, and Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont; a master’s degree in war studies from King’s College London, and has also studied at Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS-Bologna Center and the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris.
- Mark Simakovsky (2012), United States – “‘Smart Enlargement’: Shaping NATO’s European Partnerships and Enlargement in a New Era”
Mark Simakovsky is the Eurasia Strategy Advisor and NATO Coordinator in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Policy in the U.S. Department of Defense. He has been the Country Director for Georgia and Moldova in the same office, a bilateral/political officer in the Office of Russian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and a special assistant to the director of the Eurasia Policy Division of the U.S. Department of Defense, the latter two positions as a Presidential Management Fellow. Simakovsky holds a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a master’s degree from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also has been a Fulbright Scholar in Tbilisi, Georgia, and was a participant in the Manfred Wörner Seminar.
- Jesper Pedersen (2013), United States – “Energy Secuirty: A Challenge for Transatlantic Policymakers’”
Jesper Pedersen is the Democratic Staff Director for the House Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, in the US House of Representatives. Pedersen came to this position with prior work experience in both the United States and Europe working as an Outreach Officer for the EU Delegation to the United States and a foreign Policy Advisor to the US House of Representatives, in addition to working for the nonprofit Humanity in Action in Denmark and as a Legislative Assistant to US Representative Grace Napolitano. Pedersen has been awarded the Asmus Fellowship to pursue a project that seeks to explain the lack of attention to European and Eurasian energy security issues by legislators in the US Congress, the EU Parliament and other national European legislators. He hopes his work will draw attention to the limitations of existing venues for their cooperation, with the ultimate goal of exploring how energy security might be promoted to move up on the list of priorities for on the transatlantic agenda. Pedersen holds a MA in Public Administration from Roskilde University.
- Tomasz Szatkowski (2013), Poland – “Strengthening Transatlantic Security Ties By Promoting Maturity and Cohesion of Defense Policy Cooperation Between Visegrad and Nordic-Baltic Countries”
Tomasz Szatkowski is Chairman of the team of national security advisers at the think tank CAFR. In this position, Szatkowski has published numerous articles on national security and defense issues, has testified as an external expert to the Polish Senate’s Committee on National Defense, and has been invited to speak at numerous conferences and to write for the press. Before he assumed his current position, Szatkowski worked as an Adviser to the Minister coordinator for Special Services, a Security Advisor to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, and in the management of the Polish national defense syndicate organization the Bunmar Group. Szatkowski will use his Asmus Fellowship to explore the question of defense capabilities in regional settings where Poland could constitute an important participant. In particular, Szatkowski plans to examine possibilities for deeper regional cooperation in defense industry policies and to explore ways the culture of defense policy formation might be improved in the same regional setting.
