Advisory Board

John Lloyd

John Lloyd co-founded The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford in 2006, where he was Director of Journalism and a Senior Research Fellow. He is a Contributing editor at The Financial Times, and Chairman of the School of Civic Education (Russia). Lloyd was a freelance reporter in Belfast in the early 1970s. He was a reporter on LBC Radio, worked at London Weekend TV as a reporter on the London Programme and producer on Weekend World. At the Financial Times he has been Labour Editor,Labour and Industrial Editor, East Europe Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief; and founding editor of the FT Weekend Magazine. He has edited both Time Out and the New Statesman.








Wojciech












Przybylski




Wojciech Przybylski is the editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight and chairman of Res Publica Foundation in Warsaw. Previously Wojciech has been the editor-in-chief of Eurozine – a magazine representing a network of European cultural journals, and – a Polish journal Res Publica Nowa. He has launched and leads the ‘New Europe 100’ project that is networking and bringing forward a community of successful innovators from CEE across the fields of business, research media, NGO and public administration run jointly by Res Publica, Financial Times and Google. He is a member of the advisory board of the European Forum of New Ideas. His expertise includes European and transatlantic affairs as well as policies related to innovation and culture. He has been publishing in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, Journal of Democracy, EUObserver, VoxEurop, Hospodarskenoviny, Internazzionale, Gazeta Wyborcza, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and several others. His new book ‘Understanding Central Europe’ (co-ed. with Marcin Moskalewicz) has been published in 2017 by Routledge.

Dr. Slobodan G. Markovich

Dr. Slobodan G. Markovich, MBE is Full Professor at the School of Political Science of the University of Belgrade where he lectures Political Anthropology, Political History of South-East Europe and Image of European Other. He is also Full Professor at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. He has been Research Associate at LSEE/LSE since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2018. He has been the head of the Centre for British Studies at the School of Political Science in Belgrade since 2017. His published monographs include a book on Freud’s pessimism: Pessimistic Anthropology of Sigmund Freud (Belgrade, 2012), on Serbian economist, politician and diplomat Chedomille Miyatovich. A Victorian among Serbs (Belgrade, 2006), and a monograph on British-(Balkan)Serbian relations: British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans 1903-1906 (Paris, 2000, in English). His (co-)edited collections of papers in English include: British-Serbian Relations from the 18th to the 21st Centuries (Belgrade, 2018), Problems of Identities in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2006), and Challenges to New Democracies in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2004). He has been the coordinator of annual meetings “Psychoanalysis and Culture” since 2016.His research interests include: Construction of Ethnic/National and Religious Identities in the Balkans, British-Balkan Relations, psychoanalytic anthropology, and History of European Pessimism.

Dennis Deletant

Dennis Deletant served as Visiting Ion Rațiu Professor of Romanian Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Washington DC from August 2011 to July 2020. He is Emeritus Professor of Romanian Studies at University College, London, where he taught in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, between 1969 and 2011, and was Professor of Romanian Studies at the University of Amsterdam (on secondment from UCL) between 2003 and 2010.

He was appointed to the board of the British Government’s ‘Know-How Fund for Central and Eastern Europe’ in 1990 and was actively involved in its work in Romania and in the Republic of Moldova until 1999 when the board was disbanded. The establishment of the Fund was influenced by the desire of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that Britain should play a leading role in helping the nations of the former Soviet bloc to make the transition from communism to democracy, through the transfer of expertise, economic and political. For his work on the Fund, he was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1995. He was awarded ‘Ordinul pentru merit’ (Order of Merit) with the rank of commander for services to Romanian democracy on 1 December 2000 by President Emil Constantinescu of Romania and ‘The Star of Romania’, Romania’s highest civilian honour, by President Klaus Iohannis on 26 October 2016 for his activity in the promotion of Romanian history, language and culture.

He is the author of several monographs and volumes of studies on the recent history of Romania, among them Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89, London: Hurst & Co., 1995; New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996; Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-65, London: Hurst & Co.; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999; Hitler’s Forgotten Ally. Ion Antonescu and his Regime, Romania, 1940-1944, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; and British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. His most recent study in English, Romania under Communism: Paradox and Degeneration, was published in October 2018 (Oxford; New York: Routledge).

RICHARD RALPH CMG CVO

Richard Ralph is a retired professional British diplomat. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after graduating from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in politics and international relations in 1969. In the course of his career he served in the British embassies in Laos, Portugal, Zimbabwe, and Washington, before being appointed successively ambassador to Latvia, Governor of the Falkland Islands, ambassador to Romania and Moldova, and, finally, ambassador to Peru.

PhD Radu
Albu-Comănescu

Radu Albu-Comănescu, PhD in History and Lecturer at the Faculty of European Studies of the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Teaches “EU Governance and Theories of European Integration”, “European and International Negotiations” and “Cultural Heritage Management”. Fields of research extend to the history of Europe ; history of political and religious thinking ; cultural, economic and public diplomacy, as well as governance, state-building and networks of power. Active in various NGOs and think-tanks dedicated to public policies. Member of the executive board of the Ratiu Democracy Centre. At times, columnist for “Ziua de Cluj”, Romania’s largest regional newspaper. 

Alison Mutler

Alison Mutler studied Romanian literature and language at the University of London and graduated in 1987. She first reported from Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova before communism ended, and was in Romania, working for British television station ITV during the 1989 anti-communist revolt.  She moved to Romania in 1991 and joined the Associated Press which she left last year after 25 years. She has been president of the now defunct Foreign Press Association. She is now a correspondent for Romanian startup news site, universul.net. She occasionally freelances for Coda Story and Radio Free Europe among others.

Ovidiu Vanghele

Ovidiu Vanghele started his career in 2002 at MEDIAFAX Agency. During his ten years in the press agency he gradually became interested in more detailed subjects, closer to investigative journalism. He then joined the Pro TV news team. Less than a year later, he chose to leave mainstream media, founding the Center for Investigative Media, the entity he heads ever since. In the last seven years, Ovidiu published several press investigations tracing millions of euro spent pointlessly, illegally or simply stolen. His best known investigations focused on the abuses from mental health centers, the Romanian Academy monetary frauds, the National Railway Company’s contracts. Most of these also became judiciary investigations. He has spent almost the entire 2016 documenting, together with Ana Poenariu (Rise Project), the series “Toți oamenii generalului”, tracking the personal and financial development of Gabriel Oprea. In 2017, together with Vlad Stoicescu (dela0.ro), he set up a journalism platform aimed to better understand the relationship between the Churches in Romania and state institutions. Funded by its readers, the online project “Let there be light!” is, to many, an example of how journalism can survive in these tough times. He also teaches journalism at the University of Bucharest.

Dr Raul Cârstocea

Dr Raul Cârstocea is a lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History at Maynooth University, Ireland. He has previously worked as a lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leicester, as a lecturer in European Studies at Europa Universität Flensburg, as a senior research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues, and as a teaching fellow at University College London. He has held research fellowships at the Imre Kértesz Kolleg Jena, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, and at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. His research interests focus on antisemitism, Jewish history, nationalism, fascism, and the Holocaust, and more broadly on state formation and nation-building processes in the XIX and XX century Central and Eastern Europe and their consequences for minority groups. 

Prof Carol Capiță

Prof Carol Capiță graduated from the University of Bucharest, Faculty of History-Philosophy, in 1988. After a brief period as a Secondary School teacher (both in rural and urban schools), he became a staff member of his alma mater since 1990. He holds a PhD in Ancient History and a PhD in Educational Sciences. His interests (in the field of Education) lie in the area of curriculum development, the use of sources in History teaching, and the initial teacher training of History teachers. He published a number of articles on the Didactics of History, as well as being co-author (with Laura Capiţă) of two books on the Didactics of History, various teaching materials for the initial and continuing teacher training, and several History textbooks. He worked as an independent expert with the Council of Europe for the last 16 years.

Stuart Austin

Stuart studied History BA at the University of Kent in Canterbury, then completed an MSc in History of International Relations at LSE. He has worked in a number of Government Departments in the years between then and now: Exiting the European Union; Home Office; Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Since then, he has joined LSE IDEAS, as research assistant to the Engelsberg Chair for History and International Affairs – most recently Prof Margaret MacMillan – as well as programme assistant on the Conflict Research Programme and for the Strategy: New Voices lecture series.