Lucian Leustean is Reader in Politics and International Relations at Aston University where he has been teaching since 2007. He studied international relations, law and theology in Bucharest, Romania, and completed his PhD in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Amsterdam (Fellow in residence, 2018-19), the Westminster Abbey Institute, London (Fellow, 2015-16), and the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington D.C. (Senior Fellow, 2014-15), and grants from the British Academy, the European Commission and the Economic and Social Research Council. He has been awarded the Aston Excellence Award for Outstanding Early-Career Researcher of the Year, the John Charvet Teaching Studentship in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and the Scouloudi Award of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

His publications include, as author, The Ecumenical Movement and the Making of the European Community (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Orthodoxy and the Cold War. Religion and Political Power in Romania, 1947-65 (Palgrave, 2008) (Winner of the George Blazyca Prize in East European Studies from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies), and as editor, (with Grace Davie) The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021), Forced Migration and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World (Routledge, 2019), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014) and (with John Madeley) Religion, Politics and Law in the European Union (Routledge, 2010). He is the Founding Editor of the Routledge Book Series on Religion, Society and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States.

In 2018-21, he is Principal Investigator of a British Academy grant on 'When States Fail. Forced Displacement, Religious Diplomacy and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World'. The project draws on the findings of the 2018 British Academy Grant on 'Forced Migration'.

• LPM015 - Religion and Politics (MA)
• LP3016 - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Europe
• LP3020 - Nationalism and Political Power
• LP3029 - Diplomacy and Soft Power
• LPM006 - International Relations Theory (MA)

• PhD (Political Science) London School of Economics and Political Science
• MA (International Relations and European Integration); BA (Law); BA (Theology) Bucharest

Research Co-Director for Politics and International Relations

Room: NW 808 
Phone: 0121 204 3767
Email: l.leustean@aston.ac.uk