Nikola Schmidt Senior Researcher

Nikola Schmidt works as a senior research fellow and head of the Center for Governance of Emerging Technologies. He studied sociology at Charles University, international relations at the Metropolitan University (Master's), and obtained a PhD in international relations with a specialization in security studies from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. In 2015, he participated in a planetary defense project co-funded by NASA and ESA, which led to a multi-year multidisciplinary research project on planetary defense, space mining, and the role of breakthrough research projects for the Czech Republic. His professional interest lies in the relationship between technology, international relations, and forms of global governance, as well as the role of experts in political decision-making in the realms of space and cyber security, climate change, and other planetary challenges that rely on expert and scientific knowledge for political decisions. In this context, he studies the stigmatization of scientific knowledge in relation to epistemic and political authority. He has edited two books for Springer Publishing that explore planetary defense and the concept of a cosmopolitan responsible state in connection with space policy. He publishes in journals such as Nature Communications, Acta Astronautica, Space Policy, New Space, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Alternatives, and with publishers like Springer and Oxford University Press. He also works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno.