000 Dr. Cornelius Adebahr
Associate Fellow, Europe Center
Areas of Expertise
- European Union
- EU foreign policy, European security and defense policy
- EU enlargement, European Neighborhood Policy
- Southeastern Europe
- Transatlantic relations
- Iran
Short Bio
Dr. Cornelius Adebahr has been working as an independent consultant and analyst based in Berlin, where he works on European and global issues and promotes citizen dialogue on foreign policy. He has worked at the DGAP Research Institute since early 2006 and lived first in Tehran between 2011 and 2016, then in Washington, DC, and from 2021 to 2024 in Rome. He is the author of ‘Learning and Change in European Foreign Policy: The Case of the EU Special Representatives’ (Nomos 2009) and ‘Europe and Iran: The Nuclear Deal and Beyond’ (Routledge 2017).
Adebahr is also Adjunct Faculty at the Hertie School in Berlin and Associate Researcher at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome as well as a member of Team Europe Direct, an expert network of the European Commission. Since 2005, he has taught as a lecturer at international universities, including the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in Erfurt, the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. From 2014 to 2024, he worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC and Brussels.
Adebahr studied political science, philosophy, public law and international economics in Tübingen, Paris and at the Free University of Berlin, where he graduated as a political scientist in 2001 and received his doctorate in 2008. His academic, post-graduate and research work was supported by scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and the Fulbright Programme.
Languages
German, English, French, Spanish
[Last updated: March 2025]
Author's Articles

00 European Cohesion for Security and Defense
The following sections map three groups of European countries along the five axes (0–5), with concise evidentiary justification for each score.
Germany is treated in a separate section due to...

The EU as NATO’s Enabler
Brussels has started contributing considerably to the overall strengthening of what has long been an elusive concept: NATO’s European pillar.
Author/s
Dr. Patrick Keller

German Intelligence Toughens Up
Both the foreign and the domestic German secret intelligence agencies are changing.
Author/s
Dr. Henning Hoff

Trump’s Senseless Energy Battle
Taking charge of Venezuela's oil reserves is part of the Trump administration's vain attempt to dictate global energy policy.
Author/s
Dr. Kira Vinke
