Gesine is an expert on Europe's role in the world, European security and defence, grand strategy, and Europe-China relations. She currently works at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich as Senior Researcher in Global Security.
Before joining the CSS, Gesine was a Research Fellow at the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), a transatlantic think tank, where she worked primarily on European security and defense, the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and Europe’s role as a geopolitical actor. In 2024, she spent six months as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute in New York, conducting research on European balancing in the Indo-Pacific with a Fulbright-Schuman scholarship. Previously, she worked as a Research Consultant for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Shanghai and as policy advisor focusing on defense policy in the German Bundestag. She has also been an Associate Researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London, as well as a Non-Resident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for International Security.
Gesine regularly conducts briefings for governments and international institutions, as well as non-profits and the private sector, or intervenes as a speaker at public and private events and in media in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, or France24. She also regularly publishes on the topics of her expertise in English, French and German, among others for War on the Rocks or Internationale Politik Quarterly. Her Substack, Geopolitical Europe, is widely read worldwide.
One of the youngest and few female experts in her field, Gesine's work has been acknowledged through scholarships and distinctions, most recently through the award of the Research Impact Prize by the Faculty for Social Science and Public Policy of King's College London, the Fulbright-Schuman scholarship (2023-2024) and the role as Junior Ambassador of the Munich Security conference (2023).
In the last ten years, Gesine has lived, worked and studied on three continents. She has gained professional experience, among others, at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Paris, with the Shanghai Office of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, and defence policy advisor at the German Federal Parliament. Gesine holds a PhD in Defence Studies at King's College London, an M.A. in European Affairs from SciencesPo Paris, a M.A. in Political Science from Freie University Berlin, and also studied at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Besides English, French and German, Gesine also speaks Mandarin Chinese.
