Dr. Barbara Kunz is a senior researcher in the “Arms Control and Emerging Technologies” project. Prior to joining IFSH, she was a research fellow at the Institut français des relations internationales in Paris, mainly focusing on European and Franco-German defense cooperation. Previous stations of her career include Genshagen Foundation close to Berlin, Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies in Stockholm.
Barbara Kunz studied political science and international relations at the Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She also holds a PhD from Stockholm University, awarded for a dissertation on US foreign policies toward Poland, Ukraine and Belarus after the end of the cold war. In the context of her doctoral studies, she was a visiting fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations (SAIS/Johns Hopkins University) in Washington DC.
From September 2021 through August 2022, she served as an external adviser at the German Federal Foreign Office’s policy planning unit. From March through July 2023, she is the Helmut Schmidt Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Washington DC, working on a project on the future of US security guarantees for Europe.

Dr. Barbara Kunz works on issues of European security in the context of global geopolitics. She is interested in the global dynamics of power and order, as well as their implications for Europe’s security. Her focus are the nuclear great powers Russia, China and the United States and the relations between these states, notably in light of Europe’s security dependencies on the US. Barbara Kunz is particularly interested in the evolution of these dependencies and their consequences for medium-sized powers such as Germany and France, global and regional arms control as well as the future strategic positioning of NATO and European defense cooperation more broadly.

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