DPC Associates

Kurt Bassuener is co-founder and Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council (DPC), under whose aegis he has published numerous policy briefs, papers, and studies. He has worked professionally on Bosnia and wider Balkan policy since 1997 and resided in Sarajevo since 2005. He has also contributed various analyses and opinion pieces to numerous publications.He also co-authored (with Amb. Jeremy Kinsman) the Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy and Development Support, a project of the Community of Democracies (see http://www.diplomatshandbook.org). As the project’s Research Director, he authored or co-authored Handbook case studies on Belarus, Burma, Chile, China, Egypt, Ukraine and Zimbabwe. His PhD research at the University of St. Andrews beginning in 2016, will focus on the functional dynamics of postwar power-sharing in Bosnia, Macedonia, and Lebanon. He received his MA in European Studies at the Central European University in Prague in 1994 and his BA in International Relations at America University’s School of International Service (1991).

Valery Perry has worked in the Western Balkans since the late 1990s, conducting research and working for organizations including the Democratization Policy Council (DPC), the European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI), the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), the NATO Stabilization Force (SFOR), and several NGOs. From September 2017 – March 2019 she worked at the OSCE Mission to Serbia as Project Coordinator on a project to prevent and counter violent extremism, having previously worked at the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo as Deputy Director of the Education Department, and Deputy Director of the Human Dimension Department. She has consulted for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Development Program, the Regional Cooperation Council, USAID, IMPAQ International, and other organizations. She received a BA from the University of Rochester, an MA from Indiana University’s Russian and East European Institute, and a PhD from George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Valery has published numerous articles and book chapters, has spoken at conferences and policy events in the United States and throughout Europe, and has testified at the U.S. Congress.  In 2019, Ibidem Press/Columbia University Press published a book she edited, Extremism and Violent Extremism in Serbia: 21-st Century Manifestations of an Historical Challenge. In 2015, Ashgate published a book she co-edited with Soeren Keil, entitled, Statebuilding and Democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Toby Vogel is a writer on foreign affairs based in Brussels. In 2007-14, he was a political reporter with the newsweekly European Voice (now defunct), and previously associate editor with Transitions Online (www.tol.org) and a regular contributor to RFE/RL’s “Newsline”, based in Sarajevo. He has worked with the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations Development Programme in New York, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo and holds degrees in philosophy from the University of Zurich and in political science from the New School for Social Research. He is a senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council (Washington, D.C., and Berlin) and in 2003 was a Mellon Foundation fellow in humanitarian action at City University New York.

Bodo Weber is a Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council concentrating on the Western Balkans, German and European foreign and security policy, transatlantic relations, Ukraine and Turkey. Within the area of Western democratization policy he has specialized on rule of law promotion, police reform and decentralization He also works as a political consultant for political foundations and international organizations in Germany and the Balkans. In the 1990s, he worked as an editor with Perspektiven (Frankfurt/Main), a journal, and served as a board member of the Bosnien-Büro Frankfurt. He has published numerous articles and analytical papers on EU & US Western Balkan policy and frequently appears in regional media. He is the co-author of two Bosnia security studies and author of The crises of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian universities and the perspectives of junior scholars, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Sarajevo 2007. Weber has an MA in political science from the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. He lives in Berlin.

Omar Memišević is an Associate at DPC, focusing on hybrid warfare and defense policy in the Western Balkans. He was a Tom Lantos Congressional Fellow, working for an elected member of the U.S. Congress on challenges in foreign policy, after which he started focusing more on foreign policy and defense dynamics in the Western Balkans and South Caucasus. He also worked as a political affairs trainee for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, focusing on political developments and regional cooperation in the Balkans. He is a member of the IRI’s Advanced Leadership in Politics Institute (ALPI) and has been a member of the NATO-Western Balkans Taskforce, working on policy recommendations of the Alliance towards the region for the 2024 NATO Summit. Omar also wrote several policy papers on the regional defense capabilities, including a comprehensive analysis of regional weapons exports to Ukraine, published for outlets such as CEPA, Balkan Insight, and others. He graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a BA in international relations and diplomacy, and he is currently working on his MA thesis, which will examine the convergence of the malign influence of foreign actors and cultural diplomacy in B&H and the Western Balkans.