AbstractWe consider generalizations of the AdS/CFT correspondence in which probe branes are embedded in gravity backgrounds dual to either conformal or confining gauge theories. These correspond to defect conformal field theories (dCFT) or QCD‐like theories with fundamental matter, respectively. Moreover, starting from the dCFT we discuss the deconstruction of intersecting M5‐branes and M‐theory. We obtain the following results:i) Holography of defect conformal field theories. We consider holography for a general D3‐Dp brane intersection in type IIB string theory (p ∈ {3,5,7}). The corresponding near‐horizon geometry is given by a probe AdS‐brane in AdS5 × S5. The dual defect conformal field theory describes 𝒩 = 4 super Yang‐Mills degrees of freedom coupled to fundamental matter on a lower‐dimensional space‐time defect. We derive the spectrum of fluctuations about the brane embedding and determine the behaviour of correlation functions involving defect operators. We also study the dual conformal field theory in the case of intersecting D3‐branes. To this end, we develop a convenient superspace approach in which both two‐ and four‐dimensional fields are described in a two‐dimensional (2,2) superspace. We show that quantum corrections vanish to all orders in perturbation theory, such that the theory remains a (defect) conformal field theory when quantized.ii) Flavour in generalized AdS/CFT dualities. We present a holographic non‐perturbative description of QCD‐like theories with a large number of colours by embedding D7‐brane probes into two non‐supersymmetric gravity backgrounds. Both backgrounds exhibit confinement of fundamental matter and a discrete glueball and meson spectrum. We numerically compute the $\bar{\psi}\psi$ quark condensate and meson spectrum associated with these backgrounds. In the first background, we find some numerical evidence for a first order phase transition at a critical quark mass where the D7 embedding undergoes a geometric transition. In the second, we find a chiral symmetry breaking condensate as well as the associated Goldstone boson.iii) Deconstruction of extra dimensions. We apply the deconstruction method to the dCFT of intersecting D3‐branes to obtain a field theory description for intersecting M5‐branes. The resulting theory corresponds to two six‐dimensional (2,0) superconformal field theories which we show to have tensionless strings on their four‐dimensional intersection. Moreover, we argue that the SU(2)L R‐symmetry of the dCFT matches the manifest SU(2) R‐symmetry of the M5‐M5 intersection. We finally explore the fascinating idea of deconstructing M‐theory itself. We give arguments for an equivalence of M‐theory on a certain background with the Higgs branch of a four‐dimensional non‐supersymmetric (quiver) gauge theory: in addition to a string theoretical motivation, we find wrapped M2‐branes in the mass spectrum of the quiver theory at low energies.