John Harper, (B'76, '77, PhD'81), Senior Adjunct Professor, SAIS Europe and Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University

John L. Harper is Senior Adjunct Professor, SAIS Europe, and Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University. AB Haverford College, 1972; PhD, Johns Hopkins SAIS, 1981; Resident Professor of American Foreign Policy and European Studies at the Bologna Center/SAIS Europe, 1981-2020. Member of the Istituto Affari Internazionali; contributing editor, Survival; former German Marshall Fund Research Fellow. He is the author of America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945-1948, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, winner of the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, 1987 (in Italian translation as: America e la ricostruzione dell'Italia, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987); American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 1995; American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; The Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 (In Italian translation as: La Guerra fredda: un mondo in bilico, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013; Greek edition by Gutenberg Press, 2021).

Genia Kostka, (B'02, '03), Professor, Institute for Chinese Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (SAIS 2003)

Genia Kostka is Professor of Chinese Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on China's digital transformation, environmental politics and political economy. Her most recent research project explores how digital technologies are integrated into local decision-making and governance structures in China (ERC Starting Grant 2020-2025). Previously, she was Professor of Governance of Energy and Infrastructure at the Hertie School, Assistant Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and strategic management consultant for McKinsey & Company. She has a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, an MA with specializations in International Economics and International Development from SAIS Johns Hopkins University and a BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work has appeared in leading area studies and social science journals including Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Regulation & Governance, Big Data & Society, New Media & Society, Environmental Politics, and The China Quarterly. Alongside her academic work, she regularly consults for international organizations, including the World Bank, OECD, AusAID, GIZ, and Oxfam.

Stefan Meister, Head of the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations

Dr. Stefan Meister is Head of the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the DGAP. From 2019 until 2021, he worked as director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation?s South Caucasus Office. From 2017 to 2019, Meister was head of the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at DGAP, where he had previously headed its program for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. Before that, he was a senior policy fellow in the Wider Europe Team at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin and London. In the 2015/16 term, Meister was a visiting fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, where he wrote on Russian disinformation and propaganda. He has served as an election observer for the OSCE in post-Soviet countries several times and worked on conflict transformation and institution building in post-Soviet countries. Meister is co-author of Geopolitics and Security: A New Strategy for the South Caucasus (KAS/DGAP/GIP, 2018), The Russia File (Brookings, 2018), Eastern Voices (Center for Transatlantic Relations/DGAP, 2017), and The Eastern Question (Brookings, 2016). He studied international relations and East European history in Jena, Leipzig, and Nizhni Novgorod and holds a PhD from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena with a thesis on the transformation of the Russian higher education and research system.

Tyson Barker, (B'06, '07), Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Tyson Barker is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. His work focuses on US-EU relations, economic statecraft, and tech policy. He has served at the State Department in various senior positions in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs from 2014 to 2015 and from 2023 to 2025, most recently as deputy special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery. Previously, Barker served as the founding head of the Technology and Foreign Policy Program at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He previously worked at Aspen Germany, where, as deputy executive director and fellow, he was responsible for the institute’s digital and transatlantic programs. His writing has been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, the Atlantic, and Der Spiegel. Barker has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to his native English, he speaks fluent German, Spanish, and French.