Christoph Meyer is Full Professor of European & International Politics at King’s College London. He co-convenes the Research Group on European Foreign Policy and is a member of the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence.

He studied political science and sociology in Hamburg before completing an MPhil (1997) and a PhD in International Relations at the University of Cambridge in 2001. Christoph worked as a visiting doctoral researcher at the Max Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Research Associate at the University of Cologne, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre of European Policy Studies in Brussels, and Lecturer at the Birkbeck College London before joining King’s in 2007. At King's he was the first head of the new Department of European & International Studies between 2012-2015 and served as the Faculty’s first Vice-Dean for Research between 2016 and 2020. He was elected as a Fellow to the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2020.

He won a Starting Investigator Award of the European Research Council in 2008 to create the FORESIGHT project on early warning and conflict prevention. Subsequently, he was involved as research lead on the King’s side in the INFOCORE project coordinated from the University of Munich on media and violent conflict. Professor Meyer also lead an ESRC-funded project on intelligence and learning in European foreign policy (INTEL) between 2018-2021.

Office hours

Monday: 13.30 - 14.30

Tuesday: 13.30- 14.30

Research

• Foreign Policy Analysis with a geographic focus on the EU and its member states and a substantive focus on (conflict) prevention and defence
• Foresight in international politics and learning through inquiries after alleged failures of preventive action
• Social constructivist approaches in International Relations, especially strategic cultures related to security and defence
• International political communication, especially external communications of International Organisations and transnational investigative journalism
• European Union, integration, politics and public policy, especially foreign security and defence policy

Professor Meyer’s research interests are wide-ranging within the field of European Union studies and International Relations. In terms of policy fields, he has been working on security and defence policy, including conflict prevention, public communication and media coverage as well as economic governance. He has contributed to debates about the European public sphere and political integration, European strategic culture and questions of forecasting, warning and prevention, learning lessons through postmortems and public inquiries.

Professor Meyer has published in leading academic journals at the intersection of International Relations, EU and security studies, political science and political communication, including ISQ, EJIR, International Affairs, JCMS, JEPP, European Security, Intelligence and National Security, and Media, War & Conflict. He co-edited three books, three special issues/sections of journals as well as authored or co-authored three research monographs.

Professor Meyer's book Warning about War (CUP, 2020) won the 2021 best book prize of the International Studies Association and the 2021 best book prize in international communication of the ISA section. His latest co-edited book with Edinburgh University Press (October 2022) is titled Estimative Intelligence in European Foreign Policymaking: Learning Lessons from an Era of Surprise,

Teaching

• EU in the International System
• Integration of the EU
• Foreign Policies of the EU
• Foreign Policy Analysis

Expertise and public engagement

Christoph Meyer has provided advice to government and international organisations. Since 2019 he has regularly authored analytical pieces for the European Parliament’s sub-committee on security and defence (SEDE). He was the co-chair of an expert task force on the prevention of mass atrocities through the EU (with Karen E. Smith), which published an influential report in 2013. He has contributed numerous analytical and opinion pieces to public debate, published in the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Spiegel Online, Tagesspiegel, Razon, the Conversation, the Council on Foreign Relations, Peacelab, EUObserver and NewEurope. He has given television interviews to CNN International, Al Jazeera and BBC World News.