Dr. Brimmer is Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in transatlantic political and security affairs.

From 1999-2001, she was a Member of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State working on the European Union, Western Europe, the UN, and multilateral security issues. She served on the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in spring 2000. In fall 2001, she was a DAAD Research Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies also at The Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. From 1995-1999 she managed projects as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. From 1993-1995 she served as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In that capacity she worked on the UN, peacekeeping, human rights and political-military issues. She wrote weekly analyses of foreign affairs and defense issues for members of Congress and their staffs as a Legislative Analyst at the Democratic Study Group in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991-1993. From 1989-1991 she was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. She received her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and master's degrees in international relations from the University of Oxford.

She wrote the Center for Transatlantic Relations’s monograph on “The United States, the European Union and International Human Rights Issues” and was the editor for two of the Center’s edited volumes, The EU Constitutional Treaty: A Guide for Americans and The EU’s Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations. She has published several other articles and book chapters. She also comments on international affairs for broadcast and print media.