Alexander John Paul Lutz

Alexander John Paul Lutz joined the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) as a Research Fellow and Program Officer for the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in May of 2026. 

Alexander studies the ideas, culture, and politics of the post-Soviet space, with particular attention to the South Caucasus, Ukraine, and Russia. He treats the (ongoing) post-Soviet moment as one defined by a struggle to bind the boundlessness—bespredel—that the Soviet collapse unleashed: to build states, to demarcate borders, and to answer fundamental questions about belonging, meaning, and purpose. His work traces that struggle through the (trans-)national projects, religious revivals, and many smaller, stranger experiments that have flourished in the wake of the collapse. 

From 2025 to 2026, Alexander was a Junior Fellow at AFPC. Before joining AFPC, Alexander was a Max Kampelman Policy Fellow at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a Georgian Studies Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Research Associate at the Institute for Peace Studies in Eastern Christianity, and a Researcher at the Georgian Institute of Politics in Tbilisi. He also currently serves as Caucasus Editor at Lossi 36.

He holds a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) from Harvard Divinity School, a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in International Affairs, Political Science, and History from Mercer University, and has undertaken additional language study with institutions in Kyiv and Baku through the Critical Language Scholarship program.