Daniela Schwarzer

Dr. Daniela Schwarzer is director of DGAP. Previously, she was a member of the executive team of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), serving as its senior director of research, as well as heading its Berlin office and Europe program. Prior to her work at GMF, Schwarzer spent eight years at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), where she led its research group on European integration from 2008 to 2013. During this time, she advised Poland and France during their respective EU Council presidencies, served as a consultant to the Centre d’Analyse Stratégique for the French prime minister, and was a member of the “Europe” working group of the Whitebook Commission on Foreign and European Policy. Before joining SWP, she worked as an opinion page editor and France correspondent for Financial Times Deutschland.

Since 2014, Schwarzer has held a senior research professorship at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC/Bologna. She was a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in 2012–13. Schwarzer taught for several years at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Hertie School of Governance and has lectured at the Collège d’Europe in Bruges, the Institute of European Studies of Macau, and the Universität Salzburg. She serves on the advisory boards of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris and is a non-executive board member of BNP Paribas.

Thierry de Montbrial

Thierry de Montbrial founded the French Institute of International Relations (Institut français des relations internationales, Ifri) in 1979. He has been its President since then.

In 2008, he launched the World Policy Conference. He is a former Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique since 1974 and chaired its Department of Economics between 1974 and 1992. He is Professor Emeritus at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. He was the Chairman of the French-Austrian Center for European Economic Convergence (1985-2015).

He serves on the International Advisory Board of Lafarge and chairs the International Advisory Board of OCP Group (Morocco). He is on the Board of Directors of Renault Foundation. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings (1976-2012). He was a member of the Consultative Board to the WTO Director-General, Geneva (2004-2005) and a committee member for the French White Paper on Defence and Security (1993-1994; 2007-2008).

He has been a columnist for Le Monde and for Le Figaro.

In the academic field, he is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (IIE), Washington, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, and of the Advisory Council of the Standford Institute for International Studies. He sits on the editorial advisory board of Foreign Policy, Washington, the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs, Moscow, and the editorial board of the The South African Journal of International Affairs, Johannesburg.

He is a Visiting Professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, Beijing.

Between 1993 and 2001, he was the first Chairman of the Foundation for Strategic Research (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, FRS).

In 1973, he was entrusted with the creation of the Policy Planning Staff (Centre d'Analyse et de Prévision, CAP) at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was its Director from 1973 to 1979.

In June 1992, he was elected as a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques) of which he was elected chairman for the year 2001. He is also a founding member of the Académie des Technologies. He was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea in March 1993, of the Académie Royale de Belgique in January 1996, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in May 1999, of the Romanian Academy in December 1999, of the Russian Academy of Sciences in June 2003, of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences in January 2006, of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in July 2006, and of the Real Academia de Ciencias Económicas y Financieras, Spain in 2008.

He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Romanian Academy of Economic Studies (1996), of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (2002), of the University of Brasov, Romania (2003), of the University Galatasaray, Turkey (2004), of the University of Chisinau, Moldova (2005), of the State Institute for International Relations / MGIMO, Moscow (2007), of the University of Bucarest, Romania (2011) and of the A. I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania (2014).

He was awarded the Grand Prix of the French Geographic Society in 2003.

He is a Commandeur of the Légion d’honneur, Grand Officier of the ordre national du Mérite and has been awarded other state honors by the French and several foreign governments (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Italy…).

Thierry de Montbrial is the author of many professional articles and of twenty books (several of them translated in various languages) in economics and international affairs, including Action and Reaction in the World System - The Dynamics of Economic and Political Power. UBC Press, Vancouver, Toronto, 2013. He has also contributed to various collective works.

Thierry de Montbrial was born on March 3, 1943. He is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines, and received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Karl Kaiser

Karl Kaiser was educated at the Universities of Cologne, Grenoble, and Oxford and taught at the Universities of Bonn, Johns Hopkins (Bologna), Saarbruecken, Cologne, the Hebrew University, and Harvard's Departments of Government and Social Studies and the Kennedy School. He founded the Program on Transatlantic Relations of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, which was moved to the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where he is now a Senior Associate. He served as Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Bonn/Berlin and as advisor to Chancellors Brandt and Schmidt. He is a recipient of the Atlantic Award of NATO and of an Honorary Doctorate of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author or editor of numerous articles and books in the fields of world affairs and European politics.