Cristina de Esperanza Picardo

Cristina de Esperanza Picardo Picardo is a Research Assistant (Indo-Pacific Region) at the Elcano Royal Institute.

She holds a MSc in Strategic Studies from RSIS, Singapore, and a PhD in International Relations from King’s College London and the National University of Singapore, where she completed her thesis on EU-ASEAN relations. 

Previously, she was a visiting PhD researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy and a member of the Indo Pacific Research Group at King’s College London. She has also worked at the EU Institute for Security Studies (Asia desk) and at the Delegation of the European Union to Australia.

Research areas: her research focuses on the international relations of East Asia, with a focus on Southeast Asia and ASEAN, as well as EU foreign policy towards the region.

Selected publications:

• Towards Effective, Coherent and Sustainable EU External Action: Laying the Ground for the ENGAGE White Paper (with M. Sus, M. Vandendriessche, A. Saz-Carranza y G. Gruni, Working Paper Series, ENGAGE, December 2021).
• “China’s communication strategy towards the EU: increasingly skeptical reception”, with A. Ekman, in (ed.) T. Dams, X. Martin and V. Kranenburg, China’s Soft Power in Europe Falling on Hard Times, European Think Tank Network on China, April 2021.
• Towards urban decoupling? China’s smart city ambitions at the time of Covid-19 (with A. Ekman, European Union Institute for Security studies, May 2020).