Alexander Etkind
The Head of the OHPA
Alexander joined the Department of International Relations in 2022. He previously taught at the European University Institute at Florence (2013-2022), the University of Cambridge (2004-2013), and the European University at St Petersburg (1999-2004). Alexander defended his PhD in Russian cultural history in Helsinki (1998), and supervised more than 30 PhD students in Europe. His current interests are the political aspects of the Anthropocene, global decarbonization and security in Eastern Europe. In the past, he was also involved in memory studies, European intellectual history, empires and decolonization, and various aspects of Russian history. A Fellow of King's College Cambridge, Etkind was the Leader of Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, a European research project (2010-13). He is the author of Eros of the Impossible. The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia (Westview Press 1996); Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (Polity Press 2011); Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford University Press 2013); Roads not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt. (Pittsburgh University Press 2017); and Nature's Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (Polity Press 2021). Alexander coedited Remembering Katyn (Polity 2012), Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2013) and Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia (Routledge 2017). His latest book, Russia against Modernity, was released by Polity in April 2023.
Akos Kocsany
Senior Research & Administrative Project Coordinator
Akos Kocsany, currently the Project Coordinator for OHPA is a professional in higher education management, learning and development, project and event management. He has an extensive international experience of more than a decade in education, mainly in the fields of Executive MBA and US-EU study-abroad.
Akos has also gained experience in the field of marketing, social media and content creation as being the creator of the visual concepts and the manager of the online presence of his former projects. Akos has a Bachelor's degree in Commerce & Marketing from Budapest Business School.
Visiting Senior Fellow
Postdoctoral Researcher
Ayansina Ayanlade is a Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations. Before joining the CEU, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and a researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria. He holds a PhD from King’s College London, University of London, UK, and a wide range of academic experience in Nigeria, Kenya, the USA, Norway, Austria, and the United Kingdom; and has worked at the highest levels of professional politics and policy. He has contributed to research in the areas of climate change impact assessment, adaptation options, and mitigation strategy studies in Africa. His research interest lies in many aspects of the Anthropocene, focusing on critical issues on climate change; understanding of observed climate change impacts, indigenous and local knowledge of climate change and the influence of both national and international climate change negotiations; and application of Remote Sensing and GIS to land-atmospheric interactions.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Johanna Gautier Morin is a historian of capitalism and economic knowledge from a global and intersectional perspective and currently a Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations at CEU. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, as part of the ERC-funded research program ECOINT on the history of globalization and international economic thinking, and a Teaching Fellow in the Global History Lab program at Princeton University. She received her PhD in International History from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her book manuscript traces the global history of financial deregulation from a gender and postcolonial perspective in the 1970s and 1980s. She has published on the debt crisis, economic reforms, and the history of economic ideas in Algeria, Chile and Mexico. For the Open Society Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene (OHPA), she develops her new project on the critical history of international economic indicators.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Matteo Mandelli is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for European Studies (CEE) of Sciences Po Paris, where he is working on a project titled “Democracy and Ecological Transformations” coordinated by Charlotte Halpern at the Sciences Po Institute for environmental transformations. This 22-months project is funded under the Open Society Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene (OHPA), at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. It aims to deepen our understanding of the interconnections and tensions between ecology and democracy. Specifically, it focuses on mapping socio-environmental conflicts connected to the European Green Deal, both at the EU and national levels. He obtained his PhD in Political Studies from the University of Milan. His primary research interest has been the role of the welfare state in addressing the ecological crisis and the green transition, with particular attention to the distributive politics involved.
Gustavo Andreao
Postdoctoral Fellow
Gustavo is currently a Post-doc researcher at the Open Society Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene at the Central European University in Vienna (OHPA-CEU) and on the Center for Critical Imagination at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CCI-CEBRAP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He currently studies Latin-American Petrostates as well as transition processes from carbon societies to low-carbon economics. Gustavo holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), a master's degree from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), and a bachelor's degree in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), all Brazilian Universities. His research focuses on climate change mitigation and transition processes, particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries, especially Brazil. His research interests include public policies, such as energy policy and public finance. From a methodological standpoint, Gustavo utilizes institutional and evolutionary economics, as well as elements of complexity theory. His analyses often employ network analysis and computational simulations, such as agent-based models.
Junior Research & PR Associate
Stefan Stoyanov is currently a research associate with the OHPA studying his Master’s in International Relations at Central European University, focusing in International Security & Political Economy. His research interests lie in Russian and Eurasian studies, with a current focus on environmental politics and petroaggression. He is presently researching Russian economic preparations for the war with Ukraine and the role of energy politics and fossil fuels. Stefan obtained a BA in International Relations from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Junior Research & PR Associate
Conall Hirsch is currently a research associate with the OHPA studying his Master’s in International Relations at Central European University, focusing in International Climate Politics. His research specializes in Environmental politics and policy, the link between Securitization and Climate politics, decarbonization and energy politics, and disinformation studies. He is currently conducting research into the connection between disinformation and online climate politics via the internet and social media. Conall holds a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Leeds (UK).