Elena Korosteleva is Professor of International Politics and Director of the Global Europe Centre, at the University of Kent. She is also Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics, which she was awarded twice by the European Commission in recognition of her research and teaching excellence. Elena is the first female Professor at the School of Politics at Kent, and an honorary visiting Professor of LSE IDEAS, Nice, College of Europe, and a number of Central Eurasian HEIs. Before joining the School of Politics and International Relations at Kent in 2012, Elena was Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Director of the newly established Centre for European Studies at Aberystwyth University. Drawing on this experience, in 2013 Elena successfully launched the Global Europe Centre (GEC) at Kent, in partnership with Professor Whitman. Professor Korosteleva is presently the Principal Investigator of the large four-year GCRF UKRI COMPASS project (ES/P010849/1, 2017-21, £4mln), supported by the British government, to address the challenges of capacity-building in developing countries. In particular, the COMPASS project, along with its partner at the University of Cambridge, seeks to establish ‘the hubs of excellence’ at the top-level HEIs in Azerbaijan (ADA University), Belarus (BSU), Tajikistan (TNU) and Uzbekistan (UWED) for knowledge sharing in the areas of research integration, impact governance, and sustainable communities.
Elena received her Doctoral Degree in European Politics from the University of Bath (2001), and a PhD equivalent in Political Sociology from the Belarusian State University (1997). Elena served as member of the International Advisory Board for the GLOBSEC and Central European Strategy Council; Professorial Fellow of the Dahrendorf Forum at LSE IDEAS, core group member, Munich Security Conference (2018) and a regular attendee of the Summit of Minds in Armenia, at the President’s invitation. Elena works closely with UK (Westminster, FCO, DFID, British Council, WFD, HM Embassies) and EU institutions (European Commission, External Action Service, European Parliament and regional EUDs), and EU organisations (TEPSA, IRI, CEPS), and national governments in wider Eurasia. Elena is a regular media commentator for BBC, ITV, France24, Sky News and national news channels.
Elena’s research interests include the concepts of governance, resilience as self-governance, regional order-building, peoplehood and democracy promotion; EU Global Security Strategy and Foreign Policies (ENP/EaP) including relations with Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and China. In 2011 Elena completed a large ESRC-funded project (RES-061-25-0001) titled ‘Europeanising or securitising the outsiders: Assessing the EU’s partnership-building with Eastern Europe’ (2008-2011), which findings contributed towards revising EU policies in the eastern neighbourhood, with a particular focus on ‘partnership’. Recently, she also acted as CoI to the H2020 UPTAKE (EU 691818) project ‘Building Research Excellence in Russian and East European Studies’, led by the University of Tartu in partnership with Uppsala, which scored the highest evaluation mark from the European Commission for exceeding our research development targets by over 500% (please visit the project site).
Elena has more than 100 publications, including 10 authored and edited monographs. Her major academic articles appeared in the journals of Contemporary Security Policy; International Relations & Development; Cooperation & Conflict; Democratization; and International Relations.
