Grace Wermenbol

Dr. Grace Wermenbol joined the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies in October 2025, where she will contribute to the center’s work on U.S. foreign policy, to include transatlantic relations and Sino-U.S. competition, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Dr. Wermenbol previously served in high-level national security and foreign policy roles across the U.S. government, including at the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Dr. Wermenbol is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the author of A Tale of Two Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2021), a study of Israeli and Palestinian societies in the post-Oslo era. She is a Global Thought Leader with Ergo, a global intelligence and advisory firm. She holds a master’s and DPhil from St Antony’s College, the University of Oxford.

Dr. Wermenbol is a former Middle East Specialist at the Department of State, where she served as a subject matter expert and advisor on regional matters and supported U.S. foreign policy decision-making through bespoke research and briefings. Prior to State, Dr. Wermenbol was a Middle East Director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where she served both on the National Intelligence Management Council and the National Intelligence Council. As ODNI’s Director for Near East Strategic Planning, Dr. Wermenbol provided strategic direction for Middle East programming across the U.S. government and led the identification, development, and implementation of programming in line with White House priorities.

In her capacity as Acting Deputy National Intelligence Officer, she coordinated and wrote Middle Eastfocused strategic intelligence assessments for the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council. She also contributed to the President’s Daily Brief, producing insights on the most critical national security issues in the Middle East for the U.S. President and his closest advisors. Dr. Wermenbol joined ODNI from the U.S. intelligence community, where she worked on counterterrorism issues in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. She is the recipient of numerous Exceptional Service Awards, including most recently the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award (July 2025).

At Georgetown, Dr. Wermenbol teaches seminar classes on the contemporary geopolitics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel and Palestine, and the impact of strategic competition on Sino-Middle East relations. Dr. Wermenbol previously lectured on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and was a research associate at Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations. She was previously a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program (2024-2025) and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. (2019-2024). The Middle East Policy Council listed her in their 40 Under 40 awards for influential Middle East experts in 2023.

Dr. Wermenbol has published with leading international think tanks, including the Atlantic Council and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and has briefed intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations, in a personal capacity. She has also lectured and delivered talks at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Her commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Voice of America, France 24, BBC, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, ABC News, and other prominent media and research outlets. She is a co-author of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ 2020 and 2021 Armed Conflict Surveys (Routledge). Earlier in her career, Dr. Wermenbol worked in journalism roles while based in the Middle East and Europe.

Originally from the Netherlands, Dr. Wermenbol is fluent in English, German, French, and Dutch, and has proficiency in Arabic and Hebrew.