Dr. Sonja Schiffers has been serving as the Director of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Tbilisi Office-South Caucasus Region since August 2021. She is a member of the Advisory Board to the German Government for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding and an election observer with the Center for International Peace Operations, having observed for OSCE/ODIHR in Georgia, Turkey, and North Macedonia. Schiffers received her Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on Russian and Turkish illiberal external influence in Bosnia and Georgia.

Previously, Dr. Sonja Schiffers worked at the German Bundestag, first as senior advisor for Eastern European affairs with the Alliance 90/The Greens Parliamentary Group and most recently as scientific associate/foreign policy advisor to Cem Özdemir MdB. From May 2017 until December 2019, Schiffers was a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). As voluntary president (2017-2019) and head of program Gender and International Politics (2016-2020), Schiffers contributed to building up Polis180, a Berlin-based Grassroots Think Tank for Foreign and European Affairs, where she also led several civil society projects with Georgian, Ukrainian and French partners. In 2015 and 2013, Schiffers spent a semester each teaching international relations at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) and studying at Saint Petersburg State University.