Marius Ghincea

Program Director, Foreign & Security Policy

Marius is a political scientist, researcher, and international affairs expert. He is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the Quartet Institute, where he leads the Foreign and Security Policy Programme and contributes to the Institute's strategic development. His work focuses on Romanian foreign policy, European security, and the geopolitical implications of great-power competition.

He is currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich, one of Europe's leading research universities. He received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence in 2024. His academic research lies at the intersection of international relations, European politics, and institutional analysis. He studies how great-power competition shapes the European Union's institutional development, foreign and security policy, and broader patterns of European integration. A related strand of his research examines how domestic political institutions, contestation, and consensus influence foreign and security policy decisions. His research has appeared in leading international academic journals, including the Journal of European Public Policy and Foreign Policy Analysis.

Beyond academia, Marius contributes to policy development and strategic debates on European and Romanian foreign affairs. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is a member of the Strategic Reflection Group "Romania in the EU", established within the Romanian Presidential Administration. He also serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the European University Institute's EU Security Initiative and is a Senior Fellow at the Bucharest-based GlobalFocus Center.

Throughout his career, Marius has held research and teaching positions and received competitive fellowships at leading international institutions. He was a Fulbright Scholar and Global Leaders Fellow at George Washington University, an EUI-Oxford Dahrendorf Fellow at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, a research fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin, and a re Fellow. His academic experience also includes research and teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Syracuse University, Central European University, and the European University Institute.

Marius combines academic scholarship with applied research, strategic analysis, and policy advisory work for public and private institutions. His policy expertise encompasses Romania's role in the European Union and NATO, Black Sea security, transatlantic relations, and the use of economic instruments in geopolitical competition. At the Quartet Institute, he develops the Economic Statecraft Initiative, the Romania in the World programme, and projects advancing regional security cooperation.