Dr. Sarah-Masha Fainberg
Head of the Great Powers Program
Dr. Sarah-Masha Fainberg is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the “Great Powers” Program at the Elrom Center for Air and Space Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on Russian and Chinese involvement in the Middle East, security and defense dynamics in the post-Soviet space—with a particular emphasis on Ukraine—as well as air and space strategy.
Dr. Fainberg lectures in the M.A. Program in Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and has served as a Visiting Professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has previously held research and teaching positions at Columbia University, Georgetown University, and Sciences Po Paris, where she worked on issues related to international security and great-power competition.
Beyond academia, she has served as a strategic affairs advisor at the Israeli Ministry of Defense and as a Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in the Russia Program. She is also a board member of ELNET, where she contributes to initiatives aimed at strengthening cooperation between Israel and European partners.
Dr. Fainberg regularly provides strategic briefings and policy consultations to governmental and non-governmental institutions in Israel, the United States, and Europe. She is a member of Forum Dvorah, Israel’s leading network of women in national security and foreign policy.
She is fluent in Hebrew, English, French, and Russian.
Dr. Fainberg holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris and is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm) in Paris.
