Alfred Gerstl

President

Alfred Gerstl is an international relations specialist, with a geographic focus on the Indo-Pacific and in particular Southeast Asia. He is President of CEIAS and an Associate Professor at the Department of Asian Studies at Palacky University Olomouc (Czech Republic). There he heads the EU-funded project “The EU in the volatile Indo-Pacific” (EUVIP; 2023-2025). Prior to EUVIP, Alfred was a senior researcher in the EU-funded project “Sinophone Borderlands - Interaction at the Edges” (2018-2022) at Palacky University where he was also a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (2019-2021). In 2018/19, he was an Associate Professor at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk State University in Russia. Moreover, Alfred worked as postdoc researcher at the Universities of Vienna and Macquarie University in Sydney. Being an Adjunct Professor at the University of Vienna, he is currently also a sessional lecturer at the Departments of East Asian Studies and Development Studies at this university and Danube University Krems (Austria). He is also Senior Advisor at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES) in Vienna. Alfred published widely on traditional and non-traditional security issues, notably the South China Sea, as well as ASEAN-led regional cooperation, hedging strategies in Southeast Asia (ASEAN, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam), China's foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its impacts on Asia and Europe and relations between Taiwan and Central and Eastern Europe. Research interests: Indo-Pacific, ASEAN, security policy, South China Sea, Belt and Road Initiative