Cristina de Esperanza Picardo is a Research Assistant (Indo-Pacific Region) at the Elcano Royal Institute, and a PhD candidate at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore.
Previously, she has worked at EsadeGeo, at the EU Institute for Security Studies (Asia desk) and at the EU Delegation to Australia. She has regularly collaborated with other think tanks and media, including the EU Centre in Singapore, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), Cadena Ser, and El Orden Mundial (EOM).
She is also a member of the Indo-Pacific Research Group (King’s College London) and a Young Leader at the Pacific Forum.
MSc in Strategic Studies from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore and a BA in International Relations from the Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain.
Research areas: her research focuses on the European Union – ASEAN relations and, more broadly, the EU’s foreign policy towards the Indo-Pacific 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).