Experts & Staff

Ulrike Franke

Senior Policy Fellow

Areas of expertise

German foreign and defence policy; European defence, technology and geopolitics; UAVs/drones; artificial intelligence; military technology; Franco-German defence cooperation

Languages

French, English, German

Biography

Dr Ulrike Franke is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in the Paris office. Her areas of focus include German and European security and defence, the future of warfare, and the impact of new technologies such as drones and artificial intelligence on geopolitics and warfare.

Franke has published widely on these and other topics in outlets and journals such as Die Zeit, FAZ, RUSI Whitehall Papers, Comparative Strategy, War on the Rocks, Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik, and regularly appears as commentator in the media. She co-hosts Sicherheitshalber, a German-language podcast on security and defence.

She holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Oxford – where her thesis focused on the use of drones by Western armed forces. She also holds a BA from Sciences Po Paris and a double summa cum laude MA from Sciences Po Paris (affaires internationales/sécurité internationale) and the University of St. Gallen (international affairs and governance).

Franke is a policy affiliate at the Governance of AI project at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. She teaches at Sciences Po Paris.

Publications

Articles

How Britain and the EU could cooperate on defence after Brexit

The UK will have to decide how involved it wants to be in EU defence efforts. It seems likely that the country’s aim will be to have flexible structures that allow it to plug into European foreign and defence policy where doing so is in its interests.

Second acts: How Europe can renew the transatlantic partnership

This could be the moment to build a more balanced transatlantic relationship, with Europeans showing the US where we need it to engage, and how – rather than simply waiting for cues from Washington

Specials

Podcasts

Events

In the media