Mary Fitzgerald is a researcher and analyst specialising in the Mediterranean region with a particular focus on Libya. She has consulted for a number of international organisations including in the areas of peacebuilding and civil society. She has worked with the International Crisis Group (ICG), the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) among others. She is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London and an Associate Fellow at ISPI in Milan. Mary has also worked on wider initiatives with UNESCO, the Anna Lindh Foundation, the British Council and other cultural organisations. Her writing has appeared in publications including Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Financial Times and The Guardian.

Before joining SIPRI in 2014, Aude Fleurant was Director of the Arms and Defence Economics programme for the Military Academy Strategic Research Institute based at the Military Academy in Paris. Prior to that, she led the market intelligence office of Technopole Defense & Security in Canada. She has also been a lecturer in International Relations and Political Economy at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Fleurant has authored several articles on the arms industry and military expenditure, and her expertise further extends to defence political-economy and defence production sectors analysis.

Pekka Haavisto has extensive knowledge in crisis management and political negotiations. He has served as the EU Special Representative for Sudan and Darfur, UN Special Advisor to the Darfur peace process, and has also led the UN Environment Programme for the post-conflict environmental assessments and projects in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Liberia and Sudan. Haavisto has been twice a cabinet minister (Minister for International Development and Minister of Environment) and is expected to run for the second time as the Green League candidate in the Finnish Presidential elections.

Before joining NATO, Jan Havránek served as the Defence Counsellor at the Czech Delegation to NATO, where he represented his country at the Defence Policy Planning Committee. Prior to this assignment, he was Deputy Defence Policy Director and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Czech Minister of Defence, and subsequently the Assistant First Deputy Minister and Defence Policy Director. Havránek has provided his expertise to various international think-tanks and NGOs, and was named in the Diplomatic Courier’s annual list of the Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Leaders.

A Latvian politician, Zanda Kalniņa-Lukaševica is a Deputy Speaker of the Saeima, the Latvian parliament, where she sits on the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Committee of European Affairs. She serves as a Head of the Latvian Delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Previously, Kalniņa-Lukaševica held numerous posts at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including as the parliamentary secretary, in which role she was responsible for ensuring cooperation between the ministry, the Latvian parliament and the European Parliament. She has also represented the Latvian government at the EU Foreign Affairs Council meetings of development and trade ministers. Kalniņa-Lukaševica started her professional career at Jurmala’s city council and then went on to work at the Strategic Analysis Commission of the President of Latvia, where she served as an advisor to the president.

Igor Kapyrin has served in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than thirty years, being posted to countries including Portugal, France and Angola before taking up the position of Deputy Permanent Representative at the Russian Mission to the Council of Europe. Throughout his career, Kapyrin has often contributed to the debate on EU-Russian relations, security issues in Eurasia and Russia’s relations with its neighbourhood.

As a Head of European Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King’s cabinet, James Morrison is responsible for strategy, policy delivery and implementation of the Security Union across the European Commission while also working in the areas of counter-terrorism, preventing violent extremism, cyber security and organised crime. Before joining King’s cabinet, he headed the private office of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton (2009-2014). Morrison previously worked as a diplomat with the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office, which included a posting at the UK’s Permanent Representation to the EU.

With a focus on foreign affairs, human rights, justice and home affairs, and civil liberties, Kati Piri’s work in the European Parliament extends also to her role as standing rapporteur on Turkey’s accession process. Prior to joining the Parliament, Piri worked as a programme manager for the South Caucasus and Moldova at the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) and as a political advisor in the European Parliament where she provided expertise on foreign relations with a particular focus on the Caucasus.

A senior EU diplomat, Giles Portman is responsible for communicating and promoting EU policies in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, strengthening the region’s media independence, and improving the EU’s capacity to anticipate and respond to disinformation. The EEAS East Stratcom Task Force launched in 2015 the EU vs Disinformation campaign, to better forecast, address and respond to pro-Kremlin disinformation. With a career focused on the EU and its neighbourhood, Portman previously worked on EU-Turkey relations as chair of the working group that negotiated the opening of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations in 2005.

In addition to her academic expertise in cyber leadership development, national cyber resilience and risk management, Francesca Spidalieri also holds the post of Co-Principal Investigator for the Cyber Readiness Index project at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies where she has worked to develop a practical blueprint for countries to understand and address their cyber vulnerabilities. Spidalieri is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Ponemon Institute, and regularly lectures on cyber-related issues across the United States.

Anas Talalqa currently works as Human Rights Advisor at Inti Raymi Fund. The fund is known for supporting indigenous people around the world and other human rights related projects. In addition to that, Talalqa is an active member of numerous other international civil society organisations that work in the fields of peace-building, youth empowerment, refugees and leadership in the MENA region.

Paul Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe and the author of the think tank’s European Defence Cooperation report series. He previously spent four decades working for Reuters as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Tehran, Bonn and Brussels, as bureau chief in Israel/Palestine, Berlin and Brussels, as chief correspondent in France, as diplomatic editor in London, and finally as European affairs editor. Taylor’s assignments have included covering the Iranian revolution, the Cold War Euromissile crisis, the 1991 Gulf War, German reunification, the Maastricht summit, France in the 1990s, EU enlargement, the Eurozone crisis and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.