Sophia Besch

Sophia Besch is a fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her area of expertise is European defense policy.  
 
Before joining Carnegie, Sophia was a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) in London and Berlin, where she led research on European armament policy, the EU’s role in European defense, transatlantic relations, German defense policy, and the security implications of Brexit.
 
Sophia has also worked with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies; the Atlantic Council's Europe Centre, where she served as co-chair of the US-Germany Renewal Initiative; and as a strategic advisor to the conception of 'Forum Neue Sicherheitspolitik', a network of independent experts on security and defense policy situated within the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Earlier in her career, Sophia was a Carlo Schmid fellow in NATO’s Policy Planning Unit and a researcher for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She is a member of the Atlantik Brücke Young Leaders program. 
 
Sophia regularly comments on political and defense issues in print and broadcast media and has published opinion pieces in the Atlantic, Financial Times, Internationale Politik, Politico, Project Syndicate, Prospect, Survival, and War on the Rocks. She has served as an expert witness for the UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee and the German Bundestag EU Committee and has provided evidence to the European Parliament Subcommittee for Security and Defence.  
 
Sophia holds degrees in international relations and international law from Münster University, the London School of Economics, and Sciences Po Paris, and is finalizing her PhD dissertation on EU defense-industrial policy at King’s College London.