Team

Dr Tobias Fella is head of the trilateral Challenges to Deep Cuts project, which is funded by the German Foreign Office. Previously, he was a foreign and security policy advisor at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), project coordinator and research fellow at the Hertie School, and fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). In 2022, Tobias Fella held an ongoing series of lectures and workshops for the German Armed Forces on the political, military and economic aspects of the war in Ukraine. In the process, he prepared selected units for their deployment in Lithuania as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence. Tobias Fella holds a PhD in political science from the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he researched the idea of American decline in neoconservative thinking, and a Magister Artium in political science, history and law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is an alumnus of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. You can contact him via e-mail at fella(at)ifsh.de

Expertise

Arms Control I US-China-Russia Relations I World Orders

Lucian Bumeder is the coordinator of the Young Deep Cuts Commission. He holds a Master's in international relations from Freie Universität Berlin and the Moscow State Institute for International Affairs (MGIMO). Previously he worked for the transnational journalist network n-ost and as a policy aide in the German Bundestag. He is fluent in German, English and Russian. You can contact him via email to bumeder(at)ifsh.de

Expertise

Russian Foreign Policy I Nuclear arms-control I Russian-American relations

Lina Grob is the research assistant in the project Deep Cuts. She holds a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Management from the OTH Regensburg. Currently, she is studying in the master's program Peace and Security Studies at the IFSH and University of Hamburg. You can contact her via email grob(at)ifsh.de.

Expertise

Arms control I Eastern Europe and Russia I EU enlargement

Xiaodon Liang is the senior policy analyst for nuclear weapons policy and disarmament at the Arms Control Association. He focuses on U.S. nuclear weapons policy, the budget, arms control and disarmament policy issues, and U.S. strategic relations with Russia and China. He reports on these and other developments for Arms Control Today and in the Nuclear Disarmament Monitor newsletter.

Xiaodon holds a PhD in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he researched the politics of arms industry management in semi-industrialized countries. During his graduate studies, he was also a contributor to the World Peace Foundation's work on analyzing the arms trade. Before that, Xiaodon was a research assistant with the political and security affairs team at the National Bureau of Asian Research where he focused on maritime and nuclear issues. He began his career as an intern with ACA in 2011. You can contact him via e-mail at xliang(at)armscontrol.org

Expertise

U.S. nuclear weapons policy I Budget, arms control and disarmament policy issues I U.S. strategic relations with Russia and China