About me

Since 2009, I serve as Senior Researcher and Head of Unit for Foreign Policy and EU Studies at the Danish Institute for International Studies. 

My main research interests pertain to European security and integration, with a particular reference to the politics and political economy of the wider Europe. My book, Why Europe Fears its Neighbors, was published by Praeger in September 2009 (an updated Turkish-language edition for the mass market was published by Inkilap in May 2011).

My research features regularly in international media, such as The Economist, the Financial Times, and CNN.  Other articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, such as European Foreign Affairs Review and Cooperation and Conflict. I have served as an adviser to several Western governments and international organizations. My policy brief "A Synergy for Black Sea regional cooperation" provided the blueprint, and the name, of an official European Union policy.          

I am a frequent speaker at events around Europe and North America, most recently at Stanford University, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, the University of Cambridge, and the German Foreign Office. 

Between 2005 and 2008, I served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and as an Associate Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels. Between 2001 and 2004, I worked as a researcher in an EU Commission's network managed by Humboldt University, Berlin and earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.

Among my advisory positions, I serve as a non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations of Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in Washington, DC.