Marius Ghincea

Program Director, Foreign & Security Policy

Marius, a co-founder of the Institute, assumes a pivotal role as the head of our Foreign and Security Policy Cluster. His leadership extends to being a standing member of the Institute’s Board, where he actively contributes to shaping our strategic initiatives.

Marius earned his Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich, a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the GlobalFocus Centre in Bucharest.

Marius is the distinguished recipient of several prestigious scholarships. Among others, he was a Fulbright Scholar and a Global Leaders Fellow at the George Washington University, an EUI-Oxford Dahrendorf Fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, a Research Fellow at the Hertie School, and a re:constitution fellow in the joint program of Forum Transregionale Studien and Democracy Reporting International, funded by Stiftung Mercator. He also served in teaching roles at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna,  the EUI’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence, and Syracuse University.

Beyond academia, Marius actively engages in policy-oriented research and consultancy for both private and public entities. His focus is on EU’s foreign and security policy, global political ordering, Black Sea security, and transatlantic relations. He is particularly keen on studying foreign and security policy dynamics in his native Central and Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea. Within the Quartet Institute, he develops of Economic Statecraft Initiative, our ‘Romania in the World’ program, and our policy projects on regional security cooperation.

Over the past decade, Marius amassed experience with various think tanks specializing in foreign and security policy, as well as political risk. His professional footprint extends across Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, and the United States.