Erlingur Erlingsson is a senior visiting fellow with the Institute of International Affairs (IIA) at the University of Iceland. A career foreign policy, tech, and political-military professional, his work with the IIA centers on strategic studies, defence and security, covering NATO, transatlantic relations, Icelandic defence, and regional security.

With most of his diplomatic career spent in the Icelandic Foreign Service, he has served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington D.C., Iceland’s National Liaison Representative at NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, deputy head of the Icelandic Crisis Response Unit, Middle East and UN desk officer, and was part of the ministry’s Directorate for Defence during drawdown talks for the US Naval Air Station Keflavik in 2006. He also served as a senior advisor on stability operations and development at ISAF HQ in Kabul, and as a senior Political Officer for the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Since leaving the foreign service in 2018, Erlingur has worked at the intersection of tech, human rights, international relations, and security, including as part of Meta’s international organisations team, and in an advisory role with Google.

Erlingur was a Visiting Fellow from 2017 to 2018 with the Center for Transatlantic Relations, at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where his research focused on transatlantic relations and European security. He has a BA in History and Communications summa cum laude from Suffolk University, Boston MA, D.Phil studies in Military History from Oxford University (ABD), and an MBA from Reykjavik University.