Dr. Sebastian Mayer (PhD from European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, Germany) is a political scientist and DAAD Associate Professor at the OSCE Academy. The DAAD and its programmes are largely financed through public funding bodies, including the Federal Foreign Office,  Federal Ministry of Education and Research,  Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union.

Sebastian joined the OSCE Academy in September 2023. He has previously held positions at Kazakh-German University in Almaty, the Free University of Berlin, the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, and the University of Bremen, where he was part of the DFG Collaborative Research Center 597 – Transformations of the State. His research comprises transatlantic and Eurasian security, regional security organizations (esp. NATO, the EU, and the OSCE), regime complexity, and Central Asian security regionalism.

Recent Publications (for a comprehensive list, see www.seb-mayer.de)

Emergence and Coherence of the Central Asian Anti-Corruption Regime Complex, in: Kobil Ruziev and Rustam Urinboyev (Eds.): The Political Economy of Legal and Governance Reform in Central Asia: Law, Informality and Social Norms, Palgrave Macmillan (in print).

The International Staff, in: James Sperling and Mark Webber: The Oxford Handbook of NATO, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2025), 294-308.

tog. with Jakob Lempp (Eds.): The EU as an Actor in Central Asia: External Impacts, Regional Responses, Palgrave Macmillan (2024).

tog. with Jakob Lempp (Eds.): Central Asia in a Multipolar World: Internal Change, External Actors, Regional Cooperation, Cham: Springer (2024).

Security Cooperation, in: J. Lempp and S. Mayer (Eds.) Central Asia in a Multipolar World: Internal Change, External Actors, Regional Cooperation, Cham: Springer (2024), 399-416.

Research Handbook on NATO, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (2023).

Cooperation from Outside: Security Regionalism in Central Asia and Its Limits. Central Asian Affairs, 8(2), (2021), 203-228.