Dr Cinzia Bianco is a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Berlin, where she is working on political, security and economic developments in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region and relations with Europe. Additionally, she is a senior analyst at Gulf State Analytics. Previously, Bianco was a research fellow for the European Commission's project on EU-GCC relations 'Sharaka' between 2013 and 2014.
She holds an MA degree in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College London and a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, where she worked on threat perceptions in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) after the 2011 Arab uprisings.
Selected Talks
- Panelist on “Re-drawing the political borders of the Gulf Cooperation Council: foreign and domestic politics”, The Eleventh Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, 19 August 2019
- Panelist on “Gulf States’ geopolitical calculus in the Horn of Africa”, Colloque « Les pays du Golfe et le monde arabe », Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’École Militaire, France, 25 June 2019
- Lecturer, “From Political Engagement to Political Demonisation: US-Iran Policy 2013-2019”, European University Institute, Italy, 4 June 2019
- Paper-presenter at the Workshop “Re-imagining Regional Security ”, Georgetown University Qatar (Doha), 14 April 2019.
- Speaker,"Foreign Policies in the Arab Gulf: Trends and Developments", Fondation pour la recherche stratègique, Paris, 13 September 2018
- Speaker,"12th Al Jazeera Forum: The Gulf, the Arabs and the World amid Current Developments”, Doha, 28 April 2018
- Speaker on “The GCC in Crisis”, Chatham House, London, 13 June 2017.
- Paper presenter at the Workshop on New Security Dynamics in the Gulf and the Transformation of the GCC States’ Security Agenda, 7th Gulf Research Meeting, University of Cambridge, 16-19 August 2016