OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions
The Centre for OSCE Research (CORE) is the world's only research institution that is specifically dedicated to scientific and advisory work on the OSCE. CORE was one of the institutions that founded the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions in 2013. Prior to this, CORE was a member of the Initiative for the Development of a Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian Security Community (IDEAS) that attracted much attention within the OSCE community in 2012.
CORE is a department of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), which was established in 1971. The IFSH has about 50 employees and is headed by its Director, Prof. Michael Brzoska. From its inception, the IFSH has made regular contributions to research on the CSCE/OSCE process. This, in turn, paved the way for the creation of CORE, which was founded on 6 January 2000. German Federal President Johannes Rau and OSCE Secretary General Jan Kubis attended the opening ceremony. CORE is headed by Dr Wolfgang Zellner.
CORE is a politically independent think tank, combining basic research on the OSCE with capacity-building projects and lecturing. CORE addresses political actors, the academic community and the interested broad public. It seeks to contribute to a realistic assessment of the capacities and limitations of the OSCE. Much of CORE’s work concerns the transition processes in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Important activity areas of the OSCE have been the subjects of CORE research projects. CORE frequently produces OSCE-related analyses and policy papers. It is also the publisher of the OSCE Yearbook. As a capacity-building institution, CORE had a leading role in conceptualizing and founding the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. A particular specialty of CORE is conducting tailor-made training courses for incoming OSCE Chairmanships. CORE has also carried out mediation work, as was the case during a dialogue project in Tajikistan that aimed at improving relations between secular and moderate Islamists forces. In Germany, CORE is also a leading consultant on conventional arms control in Europe.
Contact:
Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg
Beim Schlump 83
20144 Hamburg
Phone: +49 (0)40 866 077-0
Fax: +49 (0)40 866 36 15
http://ifsh.de/en/
Dr Wolfgang Zellner (Germany) is Deputy Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) and Head of the IFSH’s Centre for OSCE Research (CORE). Dr Zellner received his PhD in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin in 1994 with a dissertation on the negotiations on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) with a special focus on the role of the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1984 to 1991, he advised a member of the German Bundestag on military and security policy and arms control. He has (co-)authored and edited around 100 publications, mainly on European security, conventional arms control, national minorities, OSCE-related subjects, and transnational threats and challenges.
Dr Frank Evers
Deputy Head of CORE
Contact: evers@ifsh.de
Frank Evers is the Deputy Head of the Centre for OSCE Research (CORE). In the mid-1990s, he was one of the first economic advisers in one of the then-newly established OSCE field operations and, after that, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Ukraine. Later on, he served in the OSCE Office in Yerevan were he was one of the creators of the very first Århus Centre – the first of its kind in today’s OSCE-supported network of about 50 Århus Centres. In his current capacity at CORE, he had a leading role in the collective work of designing and establishing the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. He is responsible at CORE for political consultancy as well as capacity-building projects, such as induction courses for incoming OSCE chairmanships.
Frank Evers is an expert on OSCE conflict management in a broadest sense. Regionally, he concentrates mainly on the three East Slavic countries and the South Caucasus. He studied telecommunications, East-European studies and economics in Russia and Germany. He graduated from the East-European Institute of the Free University of Berlin, where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on aspects of Russia’s economic transition.
He speaks German, English and Russian.
Dr habil Cornelius Friesendorf
Senior Researcher
Contact: friesendorf@ifsh.de
Dr. habil. Cornelius Friesendorf is Co-Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions (2018-2020). He is a political scientist who joined the Centre for OSCE Research (CORE) at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) in March 2018 as a senior researcher.
Previously he worked, among other positions, as senior advisor for an EU police reform support project in Myanmar, research associate at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, postdoc at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and project officer at the Center for Security Studies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
He received his habilitation from Goethe University Frankfurt with a study on military intervention (How Western Soldiers Fight: Organizational Routines in Multinational Missions, Cambridge University Press, 2018) and his doctorate from Zurich University with a thesis on counter-narcotics strategies (US Foreign Policy and the War on Drugs: Displacing the Cocaine and Heroin Industry, Routledge, 2007). He also studied at the Free University Berlin (Diploma in Political Science), the London School of Economics and Political Science (Master of Science in European Studies), and in Bristol and Göttingen.
Cornelius was a guest researcher or lecturer at various institutions, including the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence. His academic research and policy work covers a variety of issues, including European security structures, security sector reform, international and transnational policing, strategies against human trafficking and drug trafficking, military doctrines and practices, and the privatization of security.
From 2018-2021 he leads, together with Ursula Schröder, a project on international and transnational police assistance, funded by the German Research Foundation. Cornelius speaks German, English, French, and Russian.
