Erik Stijnman is an Army Lieutenant Colonel in active Dutch Service and has been seconded to Clingendael as Senior Research Fellow with Clingendael’s Security Unit. He focusses on security-related topics with a geographical focus on Russia and Ukraine and with a thematical focus on Combat and Peacekeeping Operations, Intelligence, Decision-making and Military Innovation and Adaptation and the use of Artificial Intelligence.
He attended the Officer Training School in Breda (KMA) in 1999 - 2003. After his graduation he served as a tank platoon commander and later transferred to the intelligence branch. In 2007 and 2009 he was deployed as part of the International Stability and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and later supported multiple police investigations, as part of article 58 support under the (2012) Dutch Police Law.
Erik holds a master's degree in Intelligence and Security at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA). In his thesis he analysed to what extent social network theory, combined with key characteristics of covert networks - such as terrorist cells and organised crime groups - could help to pre-emptively identify possible covert networks via social media monitoring, with less privacy intrusion than traditional methods.
