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. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Marius also imparts his knowledge as a university lecturer at Syracuse University in Florence. He is also a Senior Fellow at the GlobalFocus Centre in Bucharest.

Marius is the distinguished recipient of several prestigious scholarships. He is currently a re:constitution fellow, a joint program of Forum Transregionale Studien and Democracy Reporting International, funded by Stiftung Mercator. Previously, 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, and a Research Fellow at the Hertie School. He also served in teaching roles at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and the School of Transnational Governance in Florence.

Marius’s academic research is centered in two distinct directions. First, he is interested in explaining the causes, mechanisms, and practices of ‘consensus’ in foreign and security policy at national and supranational levels. His doctoral dissertation proposes a novel mechanism through which cross-party consensus over foreign and security policy is ‘manufactured’ in advanced democracies, with a focus on Germany. Second, he investigates the domestic politics of grand strategy and security policy, particularly in the United States and Germany. Currently, he explores the causal mechanism(s) that explain the grand strategic shift from ‘engagement’ to ‘strategic competition’ in America’s grand strategy towards China.

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.