Dr. Claudia Major

Dr Claudia Major holds a doctorate in political science and has been Senior Vice President for Transatlantic Security Initiatives at the German Marshall Fund since March 2025. Until then, she headed the Security Policy Research Group at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

From 2010 to 2024, she was a member of the Federal Foreign Office's Advisory Council on Civilian Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding. In 2023, Defence Minister Pistorius appointed her to the Ministry of Defence's Advisory Board on Innere Führung. She also advises the German-British Königswinter Conference. Dr Major, a Knight of the French Order of Merit Ordre national du Mérite (Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite), is a sought-after contact for multiple media outlets.

Dr Major's research and consultancy work focuses on security and defence policy in Europe (NATO, transatlantic relations, European Union, Germany, France, United Kingdom). In view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, her work is currently dominated by questions of war and peace in Europe.

Contributions deal with the role of NATO, German defence policy, nuclear order and deterrence, Europe's strategic sovereignty, Franco-German cooperation, as well as defence and peace policy approaches in the Russian war against Ukraine:

Previously, she worked at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, the EU Institute for Security Studies (Paris), the German Federal Foreign Office, and the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (commonly known as Sciences Po), among other institutions. From 2006 to 2015, she was a lecturer and a member of the admissions committee at Sciences Po Paris, an institution that, due to its administrative status, is considered the most prestigious of all higher education institutions in France.

Claudia Major studied at Sciences Po and the Free University of Berlin (where she earned a German-French degree) and received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (UK). During her studies, she received funding from, among others, the German National Academic Foundation.

She writes regularly for German and international media outlets, including the *Handelsblatt*, *Der Spiegel*, and *Le Monde*.

Dr. Major (“Going to bed in the GDR and waking up the next morning in a different country—that was a fundamental turning point for me that shaped who I am”) is regarded as a profound analyst who, for example, repeatedly emphasizes how easy it is to adopt the Russian narrative when assessing the war in Ukraine. She argues that it is incorrect to use the phrase “NATO’s eastward expansion”; NATO did not expand, she says, but rather the states of the former Warsaw Pact and the Baltic nations requested admission into NATO.

She presents in German, English, and French.