Dr. Sophia Besch is GMF's Berlin-based research director and managing director for transatlantic security. Her research and advisory work is focused on European rearmament and defense-industrial policy, US-Europe relations, the EU's role in defense, and German defense policy.
Besch joined GMF from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, where she was a senior fellow working on European defense and the transatlantic relationship. Before that, she was a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) research fellow at the American-German Institute. She also taught as an adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and was a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London and Berlin, where she ran the institute's work on EU defense industrial policy, NATO, and the UK-EU defense relationship.
Besch comments frequently on defense and foreign policy in print and broadcast media, and has written for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Internationale Politik, Politico, Project Syndicate, and War on the Rocks, among others. She has given evidence to the UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee, the Bundestag's EU Committee, the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defence, and the US Helsinki Commission. She holds a PhD from King's College London and degrees from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. She speaks fluent French and German.