Profile

Lisa Neal stu­di­ed Socio­lo­gy, Poli­tics & Eco­no­mics at Zep­pe­lin Uni­ver­si­ty, Fried­richs­ha­fen; her main focus was poli­ti­cal phi­lo­so­phy and nor­ma­ti­ve jour­na­lism theo­ry. During this time, she did inten­si­ve rese­arch on cri­sis report­ing for a year, spen­ding time in Istan­bul and Beirut.

This was fol­lo­wed by a jour­na­li­stic trai­nee­ship and a peri­od as a free­lan­ce jour­na­list with a focus on West Asia, espe­ci­al­ly Iran. She recei­ved her Master’s degree in Peace & Secu­ri­ty Stu­dies at the Insti­tu­te for Peace Rese­arch and Secu­ri­ty Poli­cy, Ham­burg; her focus was on gen­der agen­cy in the con­text of mili­tant Isla­mist groups in West Asia.

During her stu­dies and work she was sup­port­ed by the Stu­di­en­stif­tung des Deut­schen Vol­kes, the Heinz-Kühn-Stiftung NRW and the Inter­na­tio­na­le Jour­na­lis­ten Pro­gram­me (IJP)/Mercator Stif­tung, among others.

Sin­ce Febru­ary 2022 she is a doc­to­ral rese­ar­cher at the Insti­tu­te for Theo­lo­gy and Peace and is wri­ting her doc­to­ral the­sis on the topic of the EU’s for­eign secu­ri­ty poli­cy in rela­ti­on to Iran.