Claude Bruderlein is an Adjunct Lecturer on Global Health and Senior Researcher at the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He also holds a faculty appointment at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he teaches strategic planning in humanitarian protection. In his research, Mr. Bruderlein focuses particularly on frontline humanitarian negotiation and the protection of civilians in conflict situations. He directs the Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation, a joint research and policy initiative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations High-Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Doctors-Without-Borders and the HD Centre.

Before joining Harvard University, Mr. Bruderlein served as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on Humanitarian Affairs, focusing particularly on issues related to the negotiation of humanitarian access and the targeting of sanctions. He served as an expert to the UN Security Council on the humanitarian impact of sanctions in Sudan, Burundi, and Sierra Leone. He has also previously worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a delegate in Iran, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Yemen.

Claude Bruderlein teaches the annual Winter Field Study Course “Middle East Field Study Course: Humanitarian Negotiations on the Frontlines” over the January semester (HKS-IGA 353M) during which students conduct a supervised three-week assessment mission in the Middle East to study a specific humanitarian challenge. In the previous years, the Winter Field Study Course brought students to explore the impact of military occupation on West-Bank youth (2008/ 2015), the linkages between poverty and conflict in Nepal (2009), conflict transformation in Aceh, Indonesia (2010), the fate of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (2011), the response to human trafficking in Europe (2012), gender and human rights in New Delhi (2013), and the international response to Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan (2014 - 2015) and again in Jordan in 2016 - 2017. Plans for the field study are on hold; more information will be available in Fall 2020.