Ivan Krastev Keynote Speaker

Ivan Krastev is a celebrated political scientist, prolific and award winning author and a highly respected and insightful commentator and speaker on issues including  the future of Europe, the changing face of democracy, and the impact of the pandemic on society and our previous way of life.

He is Chairman, Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna.  He is also a contributing Editor the Financial Times.

His most recent book is “Is it Tomorrow Yet – Paradoxes of the Pandemic’ (Oct 2020) was listed as one of Financial Times’ book of the year.   In earlier book ‘ The Light that Failed‘ won the 2020 Lionel Gelber Prize and was listed as a book of the year by The Economist, Prospect, Financial Times and the Evening Standard.   He is also the author of Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest.

His book 2017  ‘After Europe‘  was the winner of the 2017 Central Europe Foundation Elemer Hantos Prize and was a finalist for the European Book Prize for the European Union.  Of this book, Madeleine K Albright said ‘ Ivan Krastev is one of Europe’s leading thinkers, and ‘After Europe’ offers a stark warning about the direction in which the continent is heading. Anyone who care about the future of the European project should read it carefully.”

Ivan is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the global advisory board of Open Society Foundations, New York, and a member of the advisory council of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

He is also associate editor of Europe’s World and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and Transit – Europäische Revue.   From 2004 to 2006 Ivan was the executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans chaired by the former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato.

He was the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian Edition of Foreign Policy and was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2005-2011). He has held fellowships at St. Antony’s College (Oxford); the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (Washington, D.C.); the Collegium Budapest; the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin); the Institute of Federalism at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland); and the Remarque Institute at New York University.

Ivan is a contributing opinion writer for the International New York Times, and gave a TED talk in 2012 entitled ‘Can Democracy Exist Without Trust’, which has been viewed over 750,000 times.