Dr. Marcel Dirsus is a political scientist and the author of How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive (2024).
Dirsus writes The Hundred, a politics newsletter. In addition to being a Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK) in Germany, he is a member of the Standing Expert Committee Terrorism and Interior Security at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Dirsus mainly works on regime instability, political violence and German foreign policy. He has advised democratic governments, foundations, multinational corporations and international organisations like NATO and the OECD.
Before returning to academia to complete his doctorate, he worked for a brewery in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dirsus has also gained work experience with the German Foreign Office, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and a non-governmental organisation in southern India. His writing and research has been featured by Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, BBC, CNN, The Atlantic, Reuters and many others.
His doctorate in political science at the University of Kiel was funded through a Manfred-Wörner-Scholarship for Security Politics by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. His research focused on irregular regime changes like coups. Dirsus holds a Master’s of Science in Russian & East European Studies from the University of Oxford. He was educated at the University of Warwick (UK), Zhejijiang University (China), Odessa National Polytechnic University (Ukraine) and at Sciences Po Paris (France). He’s an alumnus of the Manfred-Wörner-Seminar (organised by the Bundeswehr and the German Marshall Fund) and Young Königswinter.
Besides his native German, Dirsus speaks English, some French and basic Russian.