Our Network of Interest

Founding member of the European Think-tank Network on China, specializing in Europe-Asia relations. He serves on key committees including EU CSCAP and has published extensively on China’s development and foreign policy.

Her focus is on Italian foreign policy, Poland’s European role, disinformation, and multilateralism/G7. She is also a WIIS Italy member and has published influential works on European unity, multilateralism, and democratic defence against disinformation.

She is also a media psychologist and PhD candidate at Tbilisi State University, specializing in media effects, disinformation, and ethnic minority issues. She leads diversity-focused projects and teaches across Georgian universities.

He is also a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the War Studies department at KCL. His research interests include propaganda, strategic communication, and disinformation in warfare and international politics. He has authored three books on government narratives and media warfare. 

Her research focuses on online mis/disinformation, state-sponsored propaganda, and the influence of malicious actors on mainstream media using OSINT and digital methods. She also works as a freelance journalist for the BBC News Channel.

She has been coordinating international projects since 2017, focusing on propaganda, democratic resilience, and critical thinking. She co-published “Ukraine in Focus”, advises on diaspora engagement, and develops educational programs on disinformation, hybrid warfare, and narrative influence.

His research examines technology’s impact on geopolitics, democracy, and U.S. foreign policy. He authored “The Rise of Digital Repression”, which won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award. He is also a former deputy assistant secretary under President Obama and previously held the Church Chair at Boise State.

Her research focus is decision-making under uncertainty by advancing ML optimization and learning, with a focus on large language models (LLMs), Deep Reinforcement Learning, and ML explainability. She is also a member of AAAI, INFORMS, AIS, and a senior member of IEEE.

His research focuses on developing techniques to analyse online behaviours, improve individual well-being, and address societal problems using online data. He is also Natural Sciences and Principal Investigator at the VIRAL Lab.

Björn has over 25 years of operational and research experience from the marketing, defence, and security sectors, specializing in influence operations and hybrid threats. His work focuses especially on cross-sectoral capabilities, such as psychological defence strategies for resilience and countermeasures development.

Dr Frank Maracchione is a political economist at the University of Kent, soon to move to SOAS University (ESRC fellowship). His research examines China’s role in the Global Majority, focusing on how local communities negotiate Chinese investment, production, and influence, combining qualitative fieldwork with quantitative text analysis.

He is a researcher and project manager. His recent focus is on increasing resilience against mis/disinformation and FIMI, understanding FIMI’s impact on digital democracy. He is the project coordinator of  INNOVADE  (Innovative Democracy Through Digitalisation).

Marta Poblet is Senior Research Lead at the Data Tank and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Her research interests cover different areas at the intersection of law, political sciences, AI, distributed technologies, human-computer interaction, and theories of democracy and citizenship. She has been the PI of national and international research projects; she is a member of different EU ethic advisory boards and has published over 80 scientific articles and book chapters on these topics. 

Dr. George Bravos received his Electrical Engineering and Computer Science diploma in 2002 and his PhD in 2008. From 2009 to 2019 he worked as a researcher and adjunct professor in several universities with >30 publications. Since 2016, he is the Director of R&D of ITML, coordinating the management of 100+ EU projects. 

Her research focuses on information manipulation and interference. She also studies online harms, including their gender-based implications.

Malia Reynolds has obtained her undergraduate degree in Philosophy, International Studies and Economics from Ca’Foscari University, with an emphasis on gender studies and Italian prison law. She is now a postgraduate student in International Relations at Federico II University specializing in security and diplomacy. 

Dr. Thomas Eder is a Research Fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip). His research focus is on China’s foreign, security and international law policy. Before joining the oiip, he worked at MERICS (Mercator Institute for China Studies) in Berlin and in the Austrian Foreign Ministry. 

Katrina Kurtelius is a PhD candidate at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) and a researcher in the Horizon Europe RESONANT project. Her work focuses on Information Suppression as a distinct FIMI strategy, its TTPs and impacts on diaspora communities and democracies, and the design of psychological-defence countermeasures.

Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategic policy and security analyst specializing in Russia, Ukraine, hybrid warfare, and international security. His current research focuses on Russian military and hybrid strategy, disinformation and FIMI, democratic resilience, and China-Russia cooperation. 

Boris Noordenbos is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. His research examines conspiracy culture, disinformation, and propaganda in digital society, with a focus on Russia and other post-Soviet contexts. He recently completed the ERC-funded project Conspiratorial Memory on cultures of suspicion in post-socialist Europe. 

William Dixon is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He has a background in National Security and focuses on technology and hybrid warfare issues. 

Konrad Szatters is a China Analyst & Editor at AMO and CHOICE, focusing on China’s political discourse and foreign policy. He also serves as a Lead Researcher for the Ukrainian Heritage Diplomacy in China and Weimar Triangle at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Previously, he gained experience at the College of Europe in Natolin, the Polish Diplomatic Academy, and the Embassy of Poland in Beijing. 

His work centres on the way China’s Leninist party-state shapes Beijing’s place in the world, with a particular interest in Chinese foreign policy, China-Taiwan relations, and the Indo-Pacific. For his PhD in Comparative Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, he compared China’s influence in Singapore and Taiwan. 

Etienne’s research focuses on hybrid threats and economic security. He tracks how authoritarian actors use technology and infrastructure exports, supply chains, and investment to create dependencies and reshape global information spaces. He previously held positions at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Hudson Institute, and NATO. 

Vytautas Matulevičius is the head of Vilnius-based communications agency Bosanova, author of the book on Russian cognitive warfare Baimės frontas, and an expert with many years of experience in strategic communication. He led the 4 Percent for Defense initiative and works consistently on issues related to national security and information resilience. 

She has been working as a journalist for over 20 years specializing in media, information policy, and FIMI. Within the NGO, she heads the FIMI Research Center, which analyzes the coordination of pro-Russian media networks during the war, the media landscape of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, the hybrid Russian activities in Ukraine and beyond across various social networks, etc. She is also a member of the expert council of the Media Literacy Index, an annual nationwide study on media literacy in Ukraine, as well as a member of public council under the Committee of Verkhovna Rada on Freedom of Speech.

Dr. Philipp Lutscher, currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, is a computational political scientist specializing in digital repression (propaganda, censorship and cyberattacks). His research has been published in prominent political science journals, and his current regional focus is on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Dr. Nayara Güércio is a researcher, communications specialist, and research impact officer working across language, media, and technology. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Trinity College Dublin. Through EU-funded projects, she supports communication and impact activities on AI ethics, FIMI awareness, democratic resilience, and accessible knowledge translation. 

Dr. Richard Turcsanyi is a Program Director at Central European Institute of Asian Studies and Assistant Professor at Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic. His main research focus is Chinese foreign policy, EU-China relations, and global perceptions of China. 

Samantha Bradshaw is Director of the Center for Security, Innovation & New Technology at American University and Assistant Professor at American University’s School of International Service. Her work has focused on disinformation & foreign influence operations on social media and the ways that platforms can enhance or constrain democratic practices around the globe. 

Prof. Dr. Bob Fennis is a Professor of Consumer Behaviour at the University of Groningen. He studied psychology at Utrecht University and Communication Science at Radboud University Nijmegen. He earned his PhD from Utrecht University in 1999. His teaching and extensive research focus heavily on the psychology of (unconscious) influence and persuasion, advertising effects, and consumer self-regulation and resilience. 

Julia Bader is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on China´s foreign relations; regime transition and autocratic stability, international relations and foreign policy. She is also studying the Chinese Communist Party’s international networks. 

Wojciech is Director of GLOBSEC’s Centre for Democracy and Resilience, leading research and policy initiatives on democratic resilience across Central and Eastern Europe. He has managed projects for the EU, U.S. Department of State, NATO, and FCDO, specialising in counter-disinformation, strategic communication, audience analysis, and societal resilience. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Defence Studies at King’s College London, focusing on information warfare. 

Egle Klekere is the founder of communications and public affairs agency Deep White, an expert with extensive experience in strategic communication, public affairs and crisis management. Her publications examine influence narratives in Nordic-Baltic and Arabic-language media environments. She is also exploring affective computing in strategic communication and public policy. 

Elīna Vrobļevska, holds a PhD in political science and is the deputy director and senior researcher at the Centre for East European Policy Studies. Her doctoral dissertation was written on the topic of ‘Russia’s foreign policy identity ideas and their manifestation in foreign policy (2012–2022)’. At present, serves as a lecturer and acting researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Rīga Stradiņš University.