Dorith Kool is a Strategic Analyst at HCSS, where she contributes to projects commissioned by the Dutch ministries. Her primary interest and expertise lie in fragile states, contemporary conflict dynamics and the role of the armed forces, with a special interest in the security implications of climate change. Among other topics, she has conducted research on geopolitics, geoeconomics and the nexus between water and conflict, the security sector in fragile states, civil-military relations, and migration. She also has experience working as an Arabic translator. 

Dorith holds a MSc in Middle Eastern Studies from Leiden University and a MSc in Military Strategic Studies at the Netherlands Defence Academy.

Joris Teer is a Strategic Analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He is also a member of the Peace and Security Committee (CVV) of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV). The AIV is an independent body which advises the Dutch government and parliament on foreign policy. The Peace and Security Committee focuses on current international security issues, the armed forces, transatlantic relations and European security policy.

Before joining HCSS, Joris Teer founded Teer Strategy – an advisory firm for (geo-)political risk analysis and strategy development through scenario building and foresight projects, to make political science actionable for businesses and other organizations. He gives (diner-)lectures, moderates debates, and organizes conferences on China’s role in 21st Century geopolitics.

Teer is particularly interested in the geopolitics of the energy transition. His research of Chinese foreign policy focuses on Europe-China relations, China’s relations with the Middle East, China’s energy transition and Chinese public diplomacy and soft power. Teer speaks regularly on international issues on national radio and has published in both national Dutch newspapers and in English-language publications. He completed The Ambassador Series, a research project on the future of the Netherlands in a new geopolitical-era, for which he interviewed the former Ambassadors to India, the United, States, Russia and China. He completed a report on sustainable finance in Asia and international capital markets at the International Institute of Green Finance (IIGF), in partnership with ING Group.

Teer holds a Dual M.Sc. Degree in International Affairs focusing on China’s politics and foreign policy at Peking University and on the international relations of the Middle East, crisis-decision making and political Islam at the London School of Economics. He holds an honours BA (cum laude) from Amsterdam University College (AUC). Teer speaks Dutch (native), English (fluent) and Mandarin Chinese (limited working proficiency).

Lotje Boswinkel is a Strategic Analyst at HCSS. Prior to joining, she worked as a trainee at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), focusing on the Middle East, the future of war, and the implications of COVID-19 for European foreign policy.

She has co-authored various policy briefs and chapters, such as for the European Parliament, the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), and the journal International Affairs. Lotje also completed internships in Amman and Beirut, conducting humanitarian needs assessments in northern Syria and researching the weaponisation of healthcare.

Lotje holds a Master’s degree in International Security from Sciences Po in Paris, while her studies at Amsterdam University College and the University of Melbourne earned her a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Alexander Klimburg is currently the Director of the Cyber Policy and Resilience Program at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and the Director of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace Initiative and Secretariat. He is also a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an Associate Fellow at the Austrian Institute of European and Security Policy. 

Dr. Klimburg has researched and advised on numerous policy topics within the wider field of international cybersecurity since 2007. He has given testimony and acted as an adviser to a number of governments and international organizations on national cybersecurity strategies, international norms of behavior in cyberspace and cyber-conflict (including war, cyber-crime, and cyber-espionage), critical infrastructure protection, and Internet governance. He has participated in international and intergovernmental discussions inter alia within the UN, EU, OSCE, and G20. He has been a member of various national, international, NATO, and EU policy and working groups as well as advisory boards, has given dozens of invited talks and regularly participates and organizes track 1.5 diplomatic initiatives as well as information security research groups. He is author and editor of numerous books, research papers, and commentaries and has often been featured in the international media, including BBC, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and others. His most recent book The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace was published by Penguin Press and called "a prescient and important book" in the New York Review of Books.

Previously he held appointments as a Fellow and Associate of Harvard University Kennedy School Belfer Center and an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center, as well as a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council.  He is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics (both University of London) as well as the University of Vienna.

Publications:

The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace

Synergies between the civilian and the defence cybersecurity markets
European Commission | June 2016 
Cyber Security Capacity Building: Developing Access
NUPI | September 2015 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg, Hugo Zylberberg
Cyber Attack Information System
Springer | May 2015 | Authors: Thomas Bleier, Helmut Leopold, Florian Skopik, Alexander Klimburg, Philipp Mirtl
Council of Foreign Relations: "Two Years Later, the EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy Stumbles Forward"
Council of Foreign Relation | February 2015 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
America has a much bigger cyber problem on its hands
The National Interest | January 2015 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Building a Pluralist Future for the Internet
Atlantic Council | September 2014 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Shades of Cyber Grey – Espionage and Attack in Cyberspace
The Fletcher Forum | September 2014 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Roots-Unknown: Cyberconflict Past, Present and Future
Sicherheit und Frieden (Security and Peace) | January 2014 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Mapping the Internet Terrain
Research Note for Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania | January 2014 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg, Philipp Mirtl, Snezana Gjorgieva
Mediating Security: Comprehensive Approaches to an Ambigious Subject Festschrift for Otmar Hoell
Peter Lang | October 2013 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg, Jan Pospisil 
Watering the Grass Roots
Multistakeholder Diaologue (MIND) 6th edition | October 2013 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Commentary: The Internet Yalta
Center for a New American Security | February 2013 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
National Cyber Security Framework Manual
NATO CCD-CoE | December 2012 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg, Melissa Hathaway, Jason Healey, Eric Luiijf, Gustav Lindstrom
Gesamstaatliche Ansäzte zur Cybersicherheit : Erfahrungen aus Österreich 
Strategie und Sicherheit 2012 | January 2012 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Building Confidence in Cyberspace
New Europe, Special Edition "Cyber Security" | May 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Lessons from the Comprehensive Approach for Whole of Nation Cybersecurity (Boots, Suits, Sandals and Spooks)
per Concordiam, NATO, Journal of European Security and Defense Issues | 2011 |Authors: Alexander Klimburg
RECIPE: Recommended Elements for Critical Infrastructure Protection in Europe (Contributor)
TNO Den Haag | 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Ruling the Domain: (Self) Regulation and Security of the Internet
ICANN Study Group | 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
The Whole of Nation in Cyberpower
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, special issue: International Engagement on Cyber: Establishing International Norms and Improved Cybersecurity | 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Cyberspace and Cyberpower: Concepts, Capabilities and Conditions for Action within the EU
Study for European Parliament, AFET/SEDE | 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg, Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar
Mobilising Cyber Power
Survival (Volume 53, issue 1), International Institute of Strategic Studies | 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg
Inside Cyber Warfare by Jeff Carr (sub-chapter)
O'Reilly Media | 2010; 2nd edition 2011 | Authors: Alexander Klimburg

Pieter Bindt is a retired Rear Admiral with extensive knowledge of and experience in intelligence and security, international affairs, and Joint and Maritime operations.
After graduating from the Naval College with a specialization in Math and Game Theory (1983), he joined the Submarine Service.

He was teacher of the international Submarine Command Course and commanded a submarine, a frigate, and an amphibious transport ship as well as the integrated, operational, deployable staff, “Netherlands Maritime Force”. In this function he was Deputy Maritime Component Commander of the NATO Response Force (NRF), Commander Amphibious TaskForce of the NRF and Force Commander of the EU Counter Piracy mission, Atalanta.

Amongst his shore staff functions were Naval planner and Deputy Director Operational Policy. In April 2016 he retired as Director of the Netherlands Defence Intelligence and Security Service. In this function he significantly intensified (inter)national cooperation in collection and analyses, lead the development and implementation of new techniques and business practices, and served customers at the cabinet, operational, and tactical levels.

Tom Middendorp is a retired four-star general. He now advises The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) as a principal expert. Until October 2017 he was the Chief of Defense of the Netherlands Armed Forces. In this period he led one of the largest transformations in the history of the armed forces and was involved in over 20 military deployments worldwide.

He conducted a proces of strategic analysis and re-orientation, including several Future Force Conferences where he introduced an ecosystem approach to security and positioned Defense as a platform for innovation. During his tenure, the tide of continuous downsizing and reductions changed and the government decided to increase the defense budget. Mister Middendorp initiated and operationalized several far-reaching military cooperation programs in which the Netherlands became one of the frontrunners in Europe.

He studied civil engineering at the Royal Military Academy in Breda, is a graduate at the Command and General Staff College in the United States and received the high awards in Australia, Germany, France and Belgium. Tom Middendorp is also the Netherlands’ Special Envoy on European Defence Cooperation to the EU.

Lucia van Geuns is an experienced energy professional who held research positions at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and the Clingendael International Energy Programme (CIEP) after a career with Royal Dutch Shell (1980- 2002). She has a background in geoscience, petroleum engineering, economics & planning. Her research focuses on international energy market developments, energy transition issues and climate change policies. In her present role, she is a frequent speaker on (international) energy markets for various public and private stakeholders. Ms. Van Geuns holds a Master’s degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Leiden. She was also president of the Royal Geological and Mining Society of the Netherlands (KNGMG) from 2013-2019.

Jonathan Holslag (1981) works on international politics and Asian affairs. In 2015, Singapore’s Straits Times named him one of Europe’s most influential Asia experts. Jonathan has written over 40 academic papers and several books, translated into many languages. His latest works include: A Political History of the World (Penguin, 2018) and Silk Road Trap (Polity, 2019). He lectures at the Free University Brussels as well as several other universities and defense academies. He was appointed Special Advisor to the first Vice-President of the European Commission, Benelux Director of the Trilateral Commission, and took several other advising positions. Jonathan serves as a reserve officer with the Belgian Armed Forces.

Jilles van den Beukel is an energy specialist. His research focuses on the oil and gas industry, energy markets and the energy transition. He is a regular contributor to IEX, Energeia (the energy news service of the FD) and various research institutes and think tanks.

Jilles holds a PhD in geophysics from Utrecht University. He worked for Shell at various locations in the Netherlands, the US and Gabon in research, exploration and development. As a principal geoscientist he was responsible for the subsurface development of oil and gas fields, North Sea offshore drilling campaigns and, before leaving Shell in 2015, Denmark exploration.

Bianca Torossian is a Research Fellow at HCSS. Her studies at The University of Sydney, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Leiden University (The Hague), earned her a Bachelor's degree in political science, political economy and sociology, and a Master's degree in political science and international organization. At HCSS, Bianca contributed to a range of projects commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Defence and NATO. She primarily focussed on the intersection between emerging technologies and conflict, with multiple publications to her name on hybrid and cyber conflict. A specific area of interest is the field of artificial intelligence in defense contexts, which ties into a HCSS research project that critically analyzes the challenges and opportunities posed by robotic and autonomous systems in the Dutch military.

As an air force officer he has an extensive operational background in air & missile defence, serving as battery control officer with Hawk and Patriot systems, commander of 119 Active Air Defence Squadron at Air Base Leeuwarden and commander of the Guided Missile Group at Air Base De Peel.

Peter Wijninga has studied Air Power Strategy at USAF Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, USA. From 1996 till 1999 he served as airpower strategy lecturer at the Netherlands Defence College. From 2001 till 2004, Mr. Wijninga was head of Operational Evaluations at the Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, in which capacity he was responsible for operational evaluations of Dutch deployments in Bosnia, Macedonia, Eritrea and Iraq.

From 2004 till 2007 Peter Wijninga was back at the Air Staff to head the Policy & Plans branch of the RNLAF. During this tour the defense organisation was extensively reorganised. The Air Staff was converted into a more operations focused Air Force Headquarters, moving from The Hague to Breda, and colonel Wijninga’s branch was reorganised into the Policy Support Staff Group.

In 2008 colonel Wijninga served as Deputy Commander Kandahar Air Field (DCOMKAF) in Afghanistan.  After completing his tour as commander Guided Missile Group, Peter Wijninga was assigned to The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies in April 2012.

Senator van Kappen was born in 1941 in Semarang, the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). He is married and has two sons. In 1964 he graduated from the Naval Academy in Den Helder and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps.

In the course of his career he completed Special Forces (Commando) training with the Green Berets in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and was trained as a Mountain and Arctic Warfare Survival Instructor in Norway. He was also trained as a Naval communications and warfare officer and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.(USA). During his career he served in numerous operational and staff billets in the Netherlands and abroad. His last posting was as the top Military Adviser to the Secretary General of the U.N. and as the Director of the Military Division in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at U.N. headquarters in New York.

After his return from New York in 1998, he retired from the Marine Corps. To date he works as Senior Concept Developer for NATO/ACT. Mr. Van Kappen is a Senior Policy Advisor for the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific (Defence) Research (TNO) and the The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS). He is the chairman of the supervisory board of the Institute for Security, Experimentation and Transformation Institute (ISETI). In 2007 he was elected to take a seat in the Senate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He lectures internationally as an expert on security issues.

Jaap van den Herik is Strategic Advisor at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and founder of the Leiden Legal Technologies Program (2020). His expertise is in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Van den Herik studied mathematics (with honours) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and received his PhD degree (on Artificial Intelligence, the first to do so in the Netherlands) at Delft University of Technology in 1983. In 1984 he was visiting professor at the McGill University School of Computer Science in Montreal, Canada. Thereafter, he was subsequently affiliated as a full professor of Computer Science with Maastricht University (1987-2008) and Tilburg University (2008-2016) in combination with Leiden University where he held a part time professorship of Computer Science and Law (1988-2019). In 2014 he founded LCDS (Leiden Centre of Data Science) together with Professor Kok and Professor Meulman. 

Helga Salemon is an experienced researcher of Russia and the post-Soviet states. More recently she is also focusing on the Russia-China relations. She worked as an analyst at the Defense department of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Russia. She did, a.o., extensive research into Putin’s inner circle of former KGB men and their successors. Apart from this, Salemon has a keen interest in the network of oligarchs around Putin and Russia’s geopolitical energy policy. Salemon is also a well-known commentator on the Dutch radio and tv, and has published articles in major Dutch dailies and news magazines.

After her return from Moscow, Salemon founded the first Dutch research firm specializing in Russia: Most Translation& Research. She has done big research projects for different multinational companies that are active in Russia, as well as research for Dutch lawyers, representing Russian clients.

Salemon received a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a BS degree from the Institute for Translation and Interpretation in Utrecht. She wrote her university thesis during her study at the Frostburg State University in Maryland, USA.

Salemon speaks Dutch, English, Russian, German, French and Mandarin Chinese (limited working proficiency).

Chris Painter is a globally recognized leader and expert on cybersecurity and cyber policy, Cyber Diplomacy and combatting cybercrime. He has been on the vanguard of U.S. and international cyber issues for over twenty five years—first as a prosecutor of some of the most high-profile cybercrime cases in the country and then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, FBI, the National Security Council and finally the State Department. He has initiated, helped drive, or advised on virtually every major U.S. cyber policy for over a decade and has created innovative new organizations and approaches to deal with threats and take advantage of opportunities in cyberspace.

In his most recent government role as the nation’s top cyber diplomat, Mr. Painter coordinated and led the United States’ diplomatic efforts to advance an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet and information infrastructure and advised the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of State on these emerging issues.  The pioneering office that Mr. Painter established — the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues — was the first high-level position and office dedicated to advancing the diplomatic aspects of cyber issues ranging from national security to human rights matters. These issues include promoting norms of responsible state behavior and cyber stability, preventing cyber conflict, enhancing deterrence, advancing cybersecurity, fighting cybercrime, promoting multi-stakeholder Internet governance and advancing Internet freedom.

Among many other things, Mr. Painter was instrumental in negotiating a landmark agreement regarding the theft of intellectual property with China, negotiating a comprehensive cyber cooperation agreement with India, using diplomatic and other tools to combat high-profile cyber attacks and intrusions, and launching first of their kind “whole of government” cyber dialogues and capacity building programs with dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa.  He and his team also spearheaded the promotion of an international framework of cyber stability that includes building a consensus around norms of acceptable behavior and getting agreement on transparency and confidence-building measures designed to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could inadvertently lead to conflict in cyberspace.

Prior to joining the State Department, Mr. Painter served in the White House as Senior Director for Cyber Policy and Acting Cyber Coordinator in the National Security Council. He was a senior member of the team that conducted the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review in 2009 and he subsequently helped create and then structure a new directorate in the National Security Council devoted to these issues.

Mr. Painter has been a frequent media spokesperson and presenter on cyber issues around the globe.  He was named the Bartels World Affairs Fellow by Cornell University for 2017-2018 and chosen as a member of the Board of the Center for Internet Security.  He is the recipient of the prestigious RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy (2016), the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the Intelligence Community Legal Award (2008) and has been named to the “Federal 100” list, among other honors.  He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Cornell University and clerked for US Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher. Currently Mr Painter serves as a Commissioner in the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace.