Viola Gienger

Viola Gienger is Washington Senior Editor for Just Security and a research scholar at NYU School of Law with a focus on foreign affairs, U.S. foreign and defense policy, international security, and development. She previously served as senior editor/writer at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, where she worked on issues related to preventing, managing, and resolving violent conflict, including on violent extremism, gender, and religion, and conducted research and program strategy work on the Ukraine/Russia crisis. Prior to that, she was an editor and reporter at Bloomberg News, covering the State Department and the Pentagon for five years.

Gienger lived and worked for seven years in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, five years managing training programs and consulting for independent media in transition, and two years as a freelance journalist. She has reported from more than 30 countries, including in the Middle East and Asia, and has appeared as a guest commentator and moderator in television, radio, and podcasts. Her freelance work includes writing and editing for the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and serving as guest national security editor at The Cipher Brief. Her writing also has been published in Ozy, the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert, the Chicago Tribune, Newhouse’s Religion News Service, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Transitions Online and Al-Monitor.

She is a regular judge in national journalism contests and a member of the National Press Club, Journalism & Women Symposium, and the Society of Professional Journalists.