Francesco Saverio MONTESANO

Francesco Saverio MONTESANO (IT) is since August 2016 Research Assistant for the Baillet Latour Chair of European Union-China Relations in the Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Prior to joining the College, he was Research Assistant at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ in The Hague (2015-16). There, he focused on EU and Chinese foreign policy, with publications on EU-China economic diplomacy, the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood, Eurasian regionalism, and geopolitics in the South China Sea. He also carried out research at the EU in the World unit of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels (2015). Francesco holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2013-14), where he graduated with a dissertation on the strategic evolution of China’s foreign policy, focusing on security and peacekeeping engagement.  He also holds a BA in Political Science from LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome (2010-13).

Fields of interest: EU and Chinese foreign policy, EU-China relations, International Relations theory, Eurasian geopolitics