Participant Info

First Name
Aviva
Last Name
Guttmann
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
King's College London, Department of War Studies
Website URL
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/person.aspx?id=d0e2a446-486e-4690-968c-9f8313a63ee2
Keywords
Intelligence and the Global Cold War, terrorism and counterterrorism, covert operations, liaison and various forms of intelligence cooperation, covert diplomacy, spies, ethics and practices of targeted killings, international security
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr Aviva Guttmann is a Visiting Researcher in Intelligence Studies at King’s College London and a Marie Curie fellow with the Centre for War Studies at Southern Denmark University.

Her research is about the role of intelligence in international relations, differences between formal and informal security cooperation, counterterrorism intelligence-sharing, and covert actions by foreign powers on European soil. She works across the fields of intelligence, history, security, and IR.

Before joining KCL, she held a postdoctoral position at the Johns Hopkins University, Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies in Bologna (SAIS Europe). Her research has been supported by numerous grants and awards, which includes a PhD excellence award and prestigious pre- and postdoctoral research fellowships from the European Research Council and the Swiss National Sciences Foundation.

She was awarded a Ph.D. in contemporary history by the University of Bern (Switzerland). In the last year of her doctoral studies she held a visiting fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland). She did a MA in International Studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, with exchange years at Sciences Po in Paris and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). She received her BA in history and philosophy at the University of Basel.

Besides her academic curriculum, she has three years of professional experience in Security Sector Reform. She worked for the Swiss Embassy in Nigeria and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), where she managed projects on police cooperation in the Western Balkans.

Current and Future Research

Aviva specialises in counterterrorism intelligence cooperation. She was the first to publish about the mechanisms and politics of the Club de Berne, an important multilateral counterterrorism intelligence-sharing liaison founded in 1969. Building on the Club de Berne records, her current and future research centres on Western intelligence during the Cold War in Europe and the Global South.

Recent Publications

MONOGRAPH

  • 2018, The Origins of International Counterterrorism. Switzerland at the Forefront of Crisis Negotiations, Multilateral Diplomacy, and Intelligence Cooperation (1969-1977), Leiden/Boston, Brill Publishers, ISBN (Print): 9789004276642.

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

  • 2020, An analytical framework for postmortems of European foreign policy: should decision-makers have been surprised?” cowritten with N. Ikani und C. Meyer, Intelligence and National Security, 35, 2, 197-215
  • 2018, “Combatting Terror in Europe: Euro-Israeli Counterterrorism Intelligence Cooperation in the Club de Berne (1971-1972),” Intelligence and National Security, 33, 2, 158-175.
  • 2018, “Secret Wires Across the Mediterranean: the Club de Berne, Euro-Israeli Counterterrorism, and Swiss ‘Neutrality’,” International History Review, 40, 4, 814-833.
  • 2015, “Une coalition antiterroriste sous l`égide d`un pays neutre : la réponse suisse face au terrorisme palestinien, 1969-1970,” Relations Internationales, 163, 3, 95-110.
  • 2013, “Ernst Cinceras nichtstaatlicher Staatsschutz im Zeichen von Gesamtverteidigung und Kaltem Krieg,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 63, 1, 65-86

MEDIA OUTREACH

Prominent role in the media debate about the so called “Crypto-Leaks” – how the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries using a Swiss company. Aviva explained the foreign political context of this global espionage coup and gave interviews in Swiss TV, radio, and press.

2016. Prominent role in the media debate about a “Secret Swiss-Palestinian Deal.” She authored an article in the Tagesanzeiger on 8 February 2016 and gave radio interviews.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Western Europe and the Middle East
Expertise by Geography
England, France, Germany, Mediterranean, Middle East, United Kingdom, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Diplomacy, Government, Military, Politics