Areas of Expertise

• The political and electoral system in the United States 
• Trends in US foreign and security policy, trade policy, and transatlantic relations
• US Ukraine policy and cooperation with Europe
• German foreign and security policy

Short Bio

Dr. Dominik Tolksdorf has been an associate fellow at DGAP since August 2024. From June 2022 to July 2024, he worked for DGAP as a research fellow focusing on US politics, transatlantic relations, and cooperation with Europe on Ukraine. 

Previously, Tolksdorf worked as program director for foreign and security policy at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington, DC. In this position, he was responsible for projects in the field of transatlantic foreign and security relations, including visitor programs to the United States, international workshops, media fellowships, and US delegation trips to Ukraine, Poland, Lebanon, and Germany (2016-2022). Prior to that, he worked as a transatlantic post-doctoral fellow for international relations and security at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations, and the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI). He was also an AICGS/DAAD fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, and a senior associate researcher at the Global Governance Institute (GGI), focusing in his research on European and US policies toward the Western Balkans and Ukraine.

Before moving to the United States, Tolksdorf worked as a senior research associate at the Institute for European Studies (IES) in Brussels, where his research focused on the EU’s foreign policy system after the creation of the External Action Service. As an adjunct professor at Vesalius College at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, he taught courses on EU institutions and European politics. Between 2006 and 2009, he worked as a research gellow at the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) and as an instructor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, focusing in his research on the Western Balkans, the EU’s accession policies, and its relations with the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

Tolksdorf studied at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (BA), the University of Turku in Finland (MSc), and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (Dr. phil.). His book on the EU’s policies towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, published in 2012 by Nomos, examines the EU’s policies and measures to assist constitutional reform, police restructuring, and the fight against organized crime in the country.

Languages

German, English, French

[Last updated: August 2024]