Hope M. Harrison is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She spent 2009-2010 in Berlin on a Fulbright fellowship at the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, working on her second book about German approaches to commemorating the Berlin Wall since 1989. Her first book on the East German and Soviet decision to build the Berlin Wall was published by Princeton in 2003, and by Propylaen in German in 2011. In fall 2011, Harrison was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Harrison is the chair of the Advisory Council of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center and a member of the board of the Berlin Wall Memorial in Berlin. Her lecture series with Audible on the Berlin Wall was released in fall 2021. During this time she was also the U.S. representative on the DAAD-sponsored international delegation observing the German elections in September.