Middle East

Hanna Kovhan is a Berlin-based senior program coordinator with GMF’s Leadership Programs team. She supports the organization’s work on fellowship and alumni programs for leaders from the United States and Europe, including the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, the Policy Designers Network, the Leadership Lab, and the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network. She previously led the Transatlantic Information Media Program and served as GMF’s liaison to the Bundeswehr for the Manfred Wörner Seminar.

Her regional areas of expertise encompass the Commonwealth of Independent States and the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries.

Kovhan holds a bachelor’s degree in translation studies from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine, a master’s degree in intercultural communication from European University Viadrina in Germany, and an executive diploma in the art of diplomacy from the European Academy of Diplomacy in Poland. She also spent a year studying international relations at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in Georgia and a semester at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. 

Kristina Kausch is deputy managing director and senior fellow, GMF South. She is also GMF’s representative in Madrid. Her research focuses on Europe’s relations with its neighborhood and broader geopolitical trends in the Middle East.

Prior to joining GMF, she held positions with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Spanish think tank FRIDE, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the German development cooperation agency GIZ. She has provided articles and commentary to a range of outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, El País, Middle East Eye, Der Tagesspiegel, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. 

Janina Stürner-Siovitz is a Cities Managing Migration visiting fellow at GMF and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Political Science and the Centre for Human Rights of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research focuses on migration governance and the interaction between cities, states, and international actors. She has developed studies, organized workshops, and produced policy papers on behalf of organizations including the European Commission, and the German Federal Foreign Office, the Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project. 
Prior to joining the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Stürner-Siovitz was a refugee officer for Stuttgart, Germany, where she conducted a qualitative study on the city’s integration strategies in cooperation with migrant and refugee organizations.
Stürner-Siovitz completed her PhD summa cum laude in political science at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. She holds a master’s degree in international relations and a bachelor’s degree in political sciences from Sciences Po Aix and the University of Freiburg. She is a peer reviewer for the Knowledge Platform of the UN Network on Migration and a member of the UNHCR Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network.