Elyssa Shea joined the Department of European & International Studies as a PhD researcher in October 2022. Her research focuses on the decision-making behind Germany’s defence procurement in the air domain in the contemporary era. She is also a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Defence Studies Department.

From September 2024 to February 2025, Elyssa was a Visiting Researcher at the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences (Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr, ZMSBw) in Potsdam, Germany. Between 2022-2023, she worked part-time as a parliamentary researcher to the Earl of Kinnoull, then Chair of the European Affairs Committee in the UK House of Lords.

Prior to King’s, Elyssa worked at the Centre for European Integration of Freie Universität Berlin as a project manager and researcher, coordinating two EU foreign policy research projects funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 framework.

Elyssa holds an MSc in EU Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as a BA in Political Science and German Studies from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She gathered early work experience at the US State Department and the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin.

Research interests

• German defence procurement
• European defence industrial co-operation
• Military innovation

Doctoral research 

Explaining German decision-making on defence procurement

PhD supervisors

Professor Christoph Meyer and Professor Wyn Bowen

 

Latest publications

Shea, E. and Jaroszewicz, M. (2021) “Opening in times of crisis? Examining NATO and the EU's support to security sector reform in post-Maidan Ukraine”, East European Politics, 37:1, 159-181, DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2021.1878151.