The Year of National Defence 2025

Biographies :

• Lieutenant General Hervé de Courrèges is Director of the IHEDN and Higher Military Education. A Saint-Cyrien from the General Delestraint class (1988-1991), he chose to serve in the armoured cavalry. Promoted to General in 2018, he was appointed Deputy Commander of Land Forces Intelligence in Strasbourg. Then, in June 2020, he took command of the 27th mountain infantry brigade and the Grenoble-Annecy-Chambéry defence base. Promoted to Major General in 2021, he was appointed Commandant of the Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan Military Academy. A member of the Defence Ethics Committee, General de Courrèges is an Officer of the Legion of Honour, Commander of the National Order of Merit and holder of the Military Valour Cross.
• Sylvie Bermann is a career diplomat and the first woman to be appointed French ambassador. After serving in Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow, New York, the EU, the UN and as director of international organisations at the Quai d'Orsay, she was ambassador to Beijing (2011), London (2014) and Moscow (2017). She is currently Chair of the IHEDN Board of Directors and is the author of Goodbye Britannia. Le Royaume-Uni au défi du Brexit (Stock, 2021) and Madame l'Ambassadeur. De Pékin à Moscou, une vie de diplomatie (Tallandier, 2022).
• Laurence Bindner is co-founder of the JOS Project, which analyses violent extremist propaganda and radical discourse. Her research focuses on the dynamics of propaganda dissemination and its rhetoric. She is an auditor at the IHEDN's 72nd national session on defence policy. Her articles are published in various think tanks in France and abroad.
• Colonel Jérôme Clech holds a doctorate in mechanics from the École polytechnique, an engineering degree from the École de l'air et de l'espace, and is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris, the École de guerre and the Académie du renseignement. He is a pilot in the French Air and Space Force, in charge of the Applied Air and Space Strategies chair at the Centre for Strategic Aerospace Studies and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. He was involved in the work on the White Paper on Defence and National Security (2013) and the strengthening of European strategic autonomy in the office of the Minister of Defence (2016-2020). He is the author of La Prospective stratégique, une nouvelle approche pour améliorer la prise de décision (Éditions Hermann, 2023).
• Colin Gérard holds a doctorate from the French Institute of Geopolitics at the University of Paris-8, where he defended his thesis in 2023 on the Russian informational influence strategy targeting France. An associate researcher at the GEODE centre, he is now team leader in the Threat Analysis unit of the Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference service (VIGINUM) attached to the General Secretariat for National Defence and Security (SGDSN).
• Sarah Mohamed-Gaillard is a lecturer in contemporary history at INALCO and a researcher at CESSMA UMR 245. Her work focuses on the history of France's relations with its territories in Oceania and on the regional and international issues in contemporary Oceania. Her publications include L'Archipel de la puissance ? La politique de la France dans le Pacifique Sud de 1946 à la fin des années 1990 (PIE-Peter Lang, 2021), a Histoire de l'Océanie de la fin du xviiie siècle à nos jours (Armand Colin, 2015) and an Atlas de l'Océanie, an updated version of which was published in 2021 (Autrement, 2021, in collaboration with Fabrice Argounès, Mélanie Marie and Luc Vacher).