Dr. Brimmer is Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at The Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in transatlantic political and security affairs. She is particularly interested in the intersection of transatlantic and global security issues. Her publications include a monograph on "The United States, the European Union and International Human Rights Issues" and editing two books The EU Constitutional Treaty: A Guide for Americans and The EU's Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations.
She has served in the United States government and in international affairs think tanks. From 1999-2001, she was a Member of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State working on the European Union, Western Europe, the UN, and multilateral security issues. As a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, she assessed policy options, made recommendations, and wrote memos on European Union and United Nations issues. She also had the opportunity to serve on the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in spring 2000. She also worked on issues of autonomy and self-governance.
From 1995-1999 she managed projects as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict helping to conceive, develop, and manage core research projects for CEO-level officials leading to Commission's 50+ publications. She also organized and ran senior-level conferences in Atlanta, Cape Town, London and New York. From 1993-1995 she served as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In that capacity she worked on the UN, peacekeeping, human rights and political-military issues. She briefed and made recommendations to the Under-Secretary on these topics and worked with subsidiary bureaus to implement the Under Secretary's decisions.
Dr. Brimmer wrote weekly analyses of foreign affairs and defense issues for members of Congress and their staffs as a Legislative Analyst at the Democratic Study Group in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991-1993. From 1989-1991 she was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company where she worked with telecommunications clients in the United States and Mexico to help position business units during a complex privatization process, evaluate customer satisfaction, and prepare new product packages. She also conducted research on technology diffusion theory for the McKinsey Global Institute.
Her articles include "NATO and the Development of a European Security and Defense Policy," in Ralph Rotte and Tanja Spungala, eds., Probleme und Perspektiven der Europäischen Sicherheits-und-Verteidigungspolitik (ESVP); an entry under "American Views" in One year on: lessons from Iraq in G. Lindstrom and B. Schmitt's Chaillot Paper No. 68 for the EU Institute of Strategic Studies; "A Perspective on American-German Relations" for the Polish Institute of International Affairs' Russian language magazine, Europa Magazine, and "Samenwerken: Transatlantische betrekkingen in de 21e eeuw" in the journal Atlantische Perspectief, which was translated into Dutch from "Working Together: Transatlantic Relations in the Twenty-First Century," and "Redefining European Security? Insights from United States, European Union, and German Assistance to the Russian Federation," published by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies where she was a DAAD Research Fellow in 2001.
In addition to her other duties, Dr. Brimmer teaches a graduate seminar at SAIS on "Democracy, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention."
Dr. Brimmer received her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and master's degrees in international relations from the University of Oxford and her B.A. in international relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Executive Board of Women in International Security.