Laurent Goetschel is director of swisspeace and professor of political science at the University of Basel.

He studied international relations and political science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and at the University of Geneva where he obtained his PhD in 1993.

Laurent conducted research and lectured at the Universities of Lausanne and Bern. He was a visiting scholar at the Centre for European Studies (Harvard University, Cambridge MA), at the Centre for international Conflict Resolution (Columbia University, New York), and a senior fellow at the European Institute of Peace in Brussels. He directed a Swiss National Science Foundation’s research program on Swiss foreign policy from 1997 to 2000. Outside of academia, he served as the political advisor of Swiss Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey from 2003 to 2004.