María Santillán O’Shea is a Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute and the Institute’s contact point in the European Think Tanks Group (ETTG). BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Exeter, and MSc Public Policy and Human Development with a Social Protection Policy specialization from the United Nations University and Maastricht University. She has worked as a Research Executive in the Public Division of Kantar UK, where she has partaken in quantitative and mixed methods research projects on public opinion. She has also worked as a Research Analyst at TotalAnalysis, where she tracked the evolution of COVID-19 and the transparency of the official data on it around the world.
Research areas: global development, international and multilateral cooperation, Spanish and European cooperation (instruments, agenda, evolution), public policy analysis, social protection policy, global health.
Selected publications: Solidarity and geopolitics. The European Union as a global development actor (with Iliana Olivié, Revista de Fomento Social, 2021); Development aid, influence and governance: a road map (with Iliana Olivié, Elcano Royal Institute, 2023); The future of the EU as a global development actor (with Daniele Fattibene and Iliana Olivié, European Think Tanks Group, 2022).
Other contact information: María Santillán O’Shea on LinkedIn.
Events
- Roundtable ‘Development aid in turbulent times’ (2025)
- Workshop Elcano-ETTG: ‘The future of the EU as global development actor’ (2022)
