Since August 2019, Colonel Dr Laurent Currit works for the GCSP as a seconded officer of the Swiss Armed Forces. He first served as a Senior Advisor for the Defence and Diplomacy Programme of the Centre and took the lead of the program at the beginning of 2022. Most of his activities consist in leading International Defence Attachés Courses and delivering lectures on Defence and Diplomacy all over the world.
Until July 2019, he served as Faculty Advisor at the NATO Defence College in Rome, Italy, and in charge of the Modular Short Courses (MSCs), the continued education programme for military and civilian officers working at NATO. Before being Head of Doctrine of the Swiss Armed Forces between 2012 and 2015, he has been since 2009 a Professor for Security Policy at the Georges C. Marshall Centre for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Prior to his work at the Marshall Centre, Col. Dr Currit was in Africa (Southern Sudan, 2008) as Head of a Swiss SSR Project Team working on the establishment of a military academy.
His professional military career began in 1995, just after he obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland but he continued to study and obtained a Master in Public Administration in 2005 (University of Lausanne) and a Certificate of High Studies in European Security in 2008 (University of Geneva and GCSP). He also obtained Certificates of Project Management and Public-Private Partnership from a German Management Institute (Düsseldorf) and is a graduate of the NATO Defence College, Senior Course 128 (2016).
Col. Dr Currit comes from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, is fluent in English and German and also speaks, reads and writes Russian and Italian at a lower level. He is married to Annemarie.
During his free time, Col. Dr Currit loves to travel, read, play music, program and is part of the internet software translation community. When he is not abroad, he also spends some time to take care of his garden and is active politically at cantonal level.