EU PARTICIPANTS IN EUREN

The EU-Russia Experts Network on Foreign Policy (EUREN) was initiated by the EU Delegation to Russia in 2016 as a new form of interaction between EU and Russian foreign policy experts and think tanks. EUREN brings together foreign policy experts and think tanks from Russia and EU member states to discuss relevant foreign policy issues with the aim of exchanging views and formulating policy recommendations. The network meets on a quarterly basis in Russia and different EU capitals.

EU Participants

1. Riccardo Alcaro IAI www.iai.it. Riccardo Alcaro is Research Coordinator and Head of the Global Actors Programme of the Istituto Affari Internazionali. His main area of expertise is transatlantic relations, with a special focus on US and European policies in Europe's surrounding regions. Riccardo has been a visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe of the Brookings Institution in Washington and a fellow of the EU-wide programme European Foreign and Security Policy Studies (EFSPS). He holds a summa-cum-laude Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen.
2. Oksana Antonenko LSE  www.lse.ac.uk. Oksana Antonenko is a Director at the Global Risk Analysis team at Control Risks Group where she focuses on analysing political, regularity and security risks in Europe and Eurasia for senior decision-makers in the private and public sectors. Her team focuses on Europe, including Russia, Turkey and Central Asia, as well as Africa. In 2016-2017, Oksana was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2011-2016, Oksana was a Senior Political Counsellor at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). She advised EBRD's Senior Management and the Board on political trends and governance issues in Russia, Turkey, South Caucasus and Central Europe. In 1996-2011, Oksana was a Senior Fellow and Programme Director for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. She published extensively on regional security topics, including Russia's relations with the EU and NATO, arms control issues, protracted conflicts in Eurasia, energy security and regional cooperation in the Black Sea area. Oksana has degrees from both Harvard University and Moscow State University.
3. Steven Blockmans CEPS www.ceps.eu. Steven Blockmans is Head of EU foreign policy at the Brussels-based think tank CEPS and Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam.  For more than 20 years, Steven has combined his academic work with contract research carried out for EU and national donors, consultancy activities and training for professionals. He has advised governments of third countries on their relations with the EU and worked on numerous technical assistance projects in wider Europe and Asia. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and a frequent commentator on EU affairs for the international media. Before joining CEPS in 2012, Steven was Head of Research at the Asser Institute, an international law centre based in The Hague. From 2010 to 2014, he was a special visiting professor at the Law Faculty of University of Leuven. From 2007 to 2009, he served as a long-term expert on legal approximation in the framework of an EU-sponsored project in support of the Ministry of European Integration of Albania. He holds a PhD in International Law from Leiden University and a Diploma in Political and Social Sciences from l'Institut d'Études Politiques, Paris.
4. Nicolas de Pedro CIDOB  www.cidob.org. Nicolás de Pedro is a Senior Fellow at The Institute for Statecraft in London where he works on issues related to Russia, disinformation and hybrid threats. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Instituto de Política Internacional (IPI) at the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid. He is a member of the Experts Pool on Russia at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) in Helsinki. He has worked as a consultant for the European Parliament, OSIFE, the Club of Madrid, and the European Union-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM) project. He was a Research Fellow at CIDOB from 2009 to 2018. Nicolás has also participated in international Electoral Observation Missions of the OSCE in Russia (2011), Kyrgyzstan (2009, 2010), Tajikistan (2010), and Ukraine (2010, 2014). His fieldwork also includes a twenty-four-month stay in Kazakhstan (2005-07) funded by a grant from the Spanish MFA.
5. Sabine Fischer SWP  www.swp-berlin.org. Sabine Fischer is a team leader of the Public Diplomacy EU and Russia Project in Moscow; within the project she functions as the coordinator of the EU-Russia Expert Network on foreign policy (EUREN). She is also a Senior Fellow (on leave of absence) at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs/Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. From 2012 to 2018 she was the head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Research Division at the SWP. From 2007 to 2012 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Previously she worked at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Sabine's research interests are EU-Russia relations, Russian foreign policy, and unresolved conflicts in the EU's eastern neighbourhood.
6. Tatiana Kaustoueva-Jean IFRI  www.ifri.org. Tatiana Kastueva-Jean holds a degree from the State University of Ekaterinbourg, a Franco-Russian Master in International Relations from the University of Sciences Po/MGIMO in Moscow, and a DEA (Diplôme d'études approfondies) in International Relations from the University of Marne-la-Vallée in France. 
7. Sarunas Liekis Vytautas Magnus University www.vdu.lt. Šarūnas Liekis is Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas. Šarūnas is also Chair of the Advisory Board of Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis (VIPA). He holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University, USA and Habilitation (HP) from Vilnius University, Lithuania. He studied and did postgraduate research at Vilnius University, Brandeis University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Oxford. He publishes extensively on minority issues, and the international and political relations and history. Šarūnas Liekis is a member of nine editorial boards of the academic journals. Additionally he serves as expert at Council of Europe, NGO's and different governmental institutions of the Republic of Lithuania.
8. Kadri Liik ECFR  www.ecfr.eu. Kadri Liik is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Her research focuses on Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic region. Before joining ECFR in October 2012, Liik was the Director of the International Centre for Defence Studies in Estonia from 2006 until 2011, where she also worked as a senior researcher and director of the Centre's Lennart Meri Conference. Throughout the 1990s, Liik worked as a Moscow correspondent for several Estonian daily papers, including the highest-circulation daily in Estonia, Postimees, Eesti Päevaleht and the Baltic News Service. In 2002, she became the foreign news editor at Postimees. In 2004, she left to become editor-in-chief at the monthly foreign affairs magazine, Diplomaatia, and has also been the host of 'Välismääraja', a current affairs talk show at Raadio Kuku in Tallinn.
9. Stefan Meister DGAP www.dgap.org. Before becoming an associate fellow, Dr. Stefan Meister was head of the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia from January 2017 until March 2019. Previously, he worked as head of DGAP’s program for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia and as a senior policy fellow in the Wider Europe Team at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Meister has served as an election observer for the OSCE in post-Soviet countries and was responsible for university projects in several Russian regions, particularly Kaliningrad. In the 2015/16 term, he was a visiting fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, writing on German-Russian relations as well as on Russian disinformation and propaganda. He also writes extensively on Germany’s Russia policy, the interrelationship between Russian domestic and foreign policy, and on the Eastern Partnership. 
10. Andrew Monaghan University of Oxford  www.ox.ac.uk. Dr. Andrew Monaghan is a researcher and analyst in the field of international politics. He is a Russianist in the area studies style, with a preference for old-fashioned Kremlinology. His particular interests are Russian domestic politics, strategy and biography, and he has written extensively on Russian Grand Strategy, UK-Russia Relations, and the Euro-Atlantic community’s relationship with Russia, particularly modern deterrence. He founded the Russia Research Network in 2006, and continues as its Director. He is a Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the NATO Defence College (NDC), and commissioning editor of the NDC’s Russian Studies Series. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Previously, he has held positions as Director of Research on Russia at the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre at Pembroke College, a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House, and an Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College, Oxford. NATO, the Defence Academy of the UK and King’s College, London have also all employed him at different times over the last decade. He began his education as an historian at the University of Edinburgh, before graduating from the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London, first from the MA programme with Distinction and the Simon O’Dwyer Russell prize in 2001, and then with a PhD in 2005.
11. Arkady Moshes FIIA www.fiia.fi . Arkady Moshes is the Program Director for the EU Eastern Neighborhood and Russia research program at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Finland). He received his PhD from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992). He worked in the Institute of Europe in Moscow from 1988, before moving to Finland in 2002. He was an associate member of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House from 2008 to 2015, has authored a large number of academic and analytical publications and is a frequent media commentator. Areas of expertise: Russian-European relations and the domestic and foreign policies of Ukraine and Belarus.
12. Katarzyna PelczynskaNalecz Bartory Foundation  www.batory.org.pl Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz is an independent expert on Russia and Eastern Europe. Previously, she was director of the ideaForum think tank at the Stefan Batory Foundation, Under-secretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs dealing with Russia and Eastern Europe. Between 2014 and 2016, Pełczyńska-Nałęcz served as ambassador of Poland to the Russian Federation. She graduated from the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw in 1994, and subsequently worked at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She was a deputy director of the Centre for Eastern Studies and the head of its Russian Department.
13. Nicu Popescu ECFR  www.ecfr.eu/paris. Nicu Popescu is the director of the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and he works from ECFR’s Paris office. His topics of focus include EU’s relations with Russia and the Eastern Partnership countries. In 2019, Popescu served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Moldova. Previously, he worked as a senior analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies (2013-2018); senior advisor on foreign policy  to the prime minister of Moldova (2010, 2012-2013); senior research fellow at ECFR’s London office (2007-2009, 2011-2012), and as a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels (2005-2007). Popescu teaches at Sciences-Po Paris. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
14. Tony van der Togt Clingendael Institute www.clingendael.org.  Tony van der Togt is an Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael and simultaneously works as a Strategic Policy Adviser for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had a long career as a Dutch diplomat, dealing with Eastern Europe and Central Asia, both in The Hague and in Moscow, Almaty and St Petersburg. As Clingendael Fellow, he has published widely, including on EU-Russia relations, the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian foreign and security policy in Greater Eurasia, the EU’s Eastern Partnership, NATO-Russia relations and Dutch-Russian bilateral relations. Finally, he is a participant in several dialogue and research platforms, including the EU-Russia Expert Network (EUREN), the Cooperative Security Initiative, the Minsk Dialogue, the Russia Experts Group of Hybrid CoE in Helsinki and he is associated with the Belt and Road Research Platform of Leiden Asia Center, Leiden University and Clingendael.
15. Carolina Vendil-Pallin FOI www.foi.se .Carolina Vendil Pallin works as the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), where she headed the Russia Programme at FOI from 2009–2012 and 2014–2016. She holds a Ph.D. from the LSE. Her previous positions include Senior Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, where she headed the Research Programme 'Russia and Its Neighbour' (2006–2009) and was Expert Advisor for the Swedish Defence Commission (2012–2013). She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. Her research interests are Russian security policy and military reform, EU-Russia relations, as well as Russian information security, domestic politics and decision making.
16. Ernest Wyciszkiewicz CPRDiP www.cprdip.pl. Ernest Wyciszkiewicz is Director of the Warsaw-based Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding (since 2016) - www.cprdip.pl - formerly Deputy Director of the Centre (2011-2016), Head of International Economy and Energy Security Program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), Managing Editor of 'Evropa', the Russian language quarterly on European affairs (2003-2009). Main areas of expertise: the political economy of oil and gas, energy security, energy policies of major oil and gas producers. In particular, Russia and the EU, climate policy, Russian foreign policy and domestic affairs, EU-Russia relations and international sanctions.
17. Andris Spruds LIIA  liia.lv. Latvian Institute of International Affairs, Latvia