Kristof Bender is an experienced analyst of the political economy of South Eastern Europe, with over twenty years of experience in research, policy design and evaluation in the region. He is the deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a think tank specialised in South Eastern Europe and Turkey, and has co-authored most ESI's reports on the Balkans.Educated in sociology in Vienna and Paris, he has worked in South East Europe in various capacities since 1997, including managing higher education projects in Bosnia for the World University Service, as Attaché for Humanitarian Affairs in the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade, as a researcher for the International Centre for Migration Policy Development and as a consultant for various institutions, including the Austrian Federal Chancellery, DFID and SIDA. Kristof sits on the board of the Kosovo Civil Society Foundation (KCSF), an association aiming to develop civil society based in Pristina, and on the advisory board of Institute Alternativa, a think tank from Podgorica (Montenegro) focused on public policy. He is a jury member of the Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence run by BIRN (Belgrade) in co-operation with ERSTE Foundation (Vienna).In 2022/2023 he was a Europe's Futures fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna.He has been living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, and is currently based in Vienna. Besides English and German, he is fluent in French and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.Specialties: democracy in Europe, migration and asylum policy, human rights, policy analysis, development issues, European integration, South Eastern Europe