Magdalena Kirchner is the Country Director Afghanistan of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Prior to his, she was Chief Operating Officer and a Senior Analyst at CONIAS Risk Intelligence, Mannheim and Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Heidelberg University. A political scientist, historian and conflict researcher by training, she specializes in transatlantic security and crisis management, Turkey, and the Levant. She has been a 2016/17 Mercator-IPC Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center and is a Research Fellow at RAND Europe. Previously, she held research positions at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, VA, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv, as well as several think tanks in Ankara and the University of Heidelberg.