Florence Gaub is the Director of the Research Division at the NATO Defense College (Rome). 

Prior to this role, she served as a foresight advisor to the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, special advisor to the EU Commissioner for Strategic Foresight, Maros Sefcovic, and Deputy Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), where she was previously a Middle East expert. She began her career as a research advisor at the Middle East Faculty of the NATO Defense College. Florence is also a member of the Global Future Council on Complex Risks and Vice President of the European Forum Alpbach, an Austrian non-profit organization. Her areas of interest range from conflicts and wars in the Middle East and North Africa to institutional and geopolitical changes. She is particularly interested in long-term trends, challenges, and opportunities, and how to prepare societies for the future. 

Florence is the author of numerous publications, including the recent Arab Climate Futures, the EU report “Global Trends to 2030,” and The Cauldron: NATO’s Libya Operation. She has written a book to be published in September 2023 titled The Future: a manual. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as degrees from Sciences Po Paris, the Sorbonne, and the University of Hamburg. She has dual French and German nationality and has served as a reserve officer in the French army.