Dr. John K. Glenn is Senior Director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, where he oversees and develops the Forum’s cross-cutting analytic and research activity in areas including transnational kleptocracy, the integrity of the information space, emerging technology, and modern authoritarian influence.
Dr. Glenn has over 20 years of international experience in the nonprofit, foundation, and academic sectors, having previously served as policy director at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, director of foreign policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and executive director of the Council for European Studies.
He serves as adjunct faculty at the Elliott School for International Relations at George Washington University where he teaches graduate seminars on transatlantic relations, having previously taught at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is also an HFX Fellow on the Agenda Working Group for the Halifax International Security Forum.
He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and Ph.D. and A.M. from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is the author of numerous articles, reports, and books on international affairs and democratic development, including Framing Democracy (Stanford University Press) and The Power and Limits of NGOs (Columbia University Press, co-edited with Sarah Mendelson).
Sarah Pagung has been an Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) since February 2019. Her research focuses on Russian foreign and information policies and on Moldova. Until December 2018, Ms. Pagung worked as a Program Officer for the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, where she managed the discussion group on Russia and the Eastern Partnership as well as the joint project “A New Western Ostpolitik” with Johns Hopkins University. From 2013 to 2015, she worked in the project team of the Carl Friedrich Goerdeler Kolleg.
Ms. Pagung is currently working on a doctorate on the impact of Russian propaganda and information policy on Germany at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she studied political science. She is also an adjunct lecturer there and serves as a seminar facilitator for various formats relating to European foreign policy and Eastern Europe. From 2012 to 2013, she worked in youth and adult education in Saint Petersburg on behalf of the European Voluntary Service’s German-Russian exchange program.
