Olivier Schmitt is professor and head of research at the Institute for Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College. He’s also a senior non-resident associate fellow at the NATO Defence College, and an associate at RAND Europe. He’s currently an associate editor of the European Journal of International Securityand a board member of the Journal of Strategic Studies and of the Review of International Studies. He’s a founding member of the French Association for War and Strategic Studies (AEGES), of which he was vice-president and scientific director, and a board member of the European Initiative for Security Studies (EISS).
Before joining the Royal Danish Defence College, he obtained a Ph.D from the department of War Studies, King’s College London, and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Montreal Center for International Studies (CÉRIUM). He then joined the Center for War Studies (University of Southern Denmark – SDU) in 2015, first as an associate professor, and was later promoted to professor. He holds MA degrees from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva) and Sciences Po Aix. A reserve officer in the French air and space force, he has policy experience at the French MoD and NATO. He also worked for two think-tanks: the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Between 2020 and 2022, he was on secondment from SDU, serving as director of research and studies at the French Institute of Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN).
Expertise
- Defence Policy
- Modern Warfare
- Alliances and Collective Security
Selected Publications
- Olivier Schmitt, “Wartime paradigms and the future of western military power,” International Affairs 96:2 (2020): 401-418.
- Olivier Schmitt, “How to challenge an international order: Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organisations,” European Journal of International Relations 26:3 (2019): 922-946.
- Olivier Schmitt, “When Are Strategic Narratives Effective? The Shaping of Political Discourse through the Interaction between Political Myths and Strategic Narratives,” Contemporary Security Policy 39:4 (2018): 487-511.
- Olivier Schmitt, “French Military Adaptation in the Afghan War: Looking Inward or Outward?” Journal of Strategic Studies 40:4 (2017): 577-599.
- Olivier Schmitt, “International Organization at War: NATO Practices in the Afghan Campaign,” Cooperation and Conflict 52:4 (2017): 502-518.
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