After Merkel: Germany’s international role in a world of uncertainty

Mika Aaltola is the Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) and Editor-in-Chief of Ulkopolitiikka – the Finnish Journal of Foreign Affairs. Previously, Dr Aaltola worked as the Programme Director of the Global Security research programme at FIIA (2011-2019). His areas of expertise include US foreign and domestic policies as well as the international system and major-power relations. Aaltola is a professor (part-time) at the Tallinn University since 2012 and holds the rank of docent at the University of Tampere. He acted as visiting professor at the University of Minnesota (2006 – 2008) and as visiting fellow at Cambridge University in 1997. Aaltola has also been a visiting researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (fall 2013) and at the CERI Sciences Po (fall 2010). He obtained his PhD in social sciences from the University of Tampere in 1999.

Jana Puglierin has been the head of ECFR’s Berlin office and a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations since January 2020. She also directs ECFR’s Re:shape Global Europe project, which seeks to develop new strategies for Europeans to understand and engage with the changing international order. Before joining ECFR, Puglierin headed the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Prior to this, she was an advisor on disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation in the German Bundestag, where she also worked on matters relating to German and European foreign and security policy. Between 2003 and 2010, she was researcher and lecturer to the chair of political science and contemporary history as well as in the program for North American studies at the University of Bonn. She was also an associate at Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin from October 2010 until October 2011. In November 2017, Puglierin was a visiting fellow at the American-German Situation Room, a joint initiative of the AICGS and GMF. She is alumna of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation’s Working Group of Young Foreign Policy Experts (2007-2016), of the ZEIT Foundation Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius (2016), of the Manfred-Wörner-Seminar for German-American Relations (2009), and of the International Visitor Leadership Program (2015). She is a board member of the German Atlantic Society and a member of the extended board of Women in International Security (WIIS.de). Puglierin earned a master’s degree and a PhD in political science, international and European law, and sociology from the Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn.

Dr. Ulrike Franke is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). She leads ECFR’s Technology and European Power initiative. Her areas of focus include German and European security and defence, the future of warfare, and the impact of new technologies such as drones and artificial intelligence on geopolitics and warfare. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford – in her PhD thesis, she studied the use of drones by western armed forces. She also holds a BA from Sciences Po Paris and a double summa cum laude MA degree from Sciences Po Paris (Affaires internationales/Sécurité internationale) and the University of St. Gallen (International Affairs and Governance). Franke is a policy affiliate at the Governance of AI project at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. She was also part of UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism Ben Emmerson’s research team, examining drone use in counterterrorism contexts.

Niklas Helwig is a Leading Researcher at FIIA. His research focuses on EU foreign and security policy, German foreign and security policy, as well as the transatlantic security alliance. Before he returned to FIIA in 2019, he worked at the RAND Corporation, at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS, Washington), at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP, Berlin) and at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS, Brussels). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne and the University of Edinburgh (‘co-tutelle’).

Tuomas Iso-Markku is a Senior Research Fellow in the European Union and Strategic Competition research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). His research deals with the EU’s role in security and defence matters, European defence cooperation, EU-NATO relations, German domestic politics, German foreign and EU policy, Finnish EU policy, Finnish foreign, security and defence policy as well as European party politics.

Iso-Markku’s publications encompass both policy-oriented and academic contributions, including several research reports prepared for the Finnish government as well as articles in top-ranked international academic journals such as German Politics and International Affairs. In addition to FIIA, his research has been published by several other European research institutes and think tanks.

Prior to joining FIIA in 2013, Iso-Markku studied and worked in Germany, completing a master’s degree at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and the Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Poland. Iso-Markku is part of the pan-European Associate Researcher network of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).