Lucian N. Leustean

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

Lucian Leustean is a 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/co-editor, Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (Oxford University Press, 2021), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014) and Religion, Politics and Law in the European Union (Routledge, 2010). He is the Founding Editor of the Routledge Book Series Religion, Society and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States.

In 2018-21, he was Principal Investigator of a British Academy grant 'When States Fail. Forced Displacement, Religious Diplomacy and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World'. 

In 2022, book launches of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe were held at the European Parliament (available here) and the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, Georgetown University (available here).

• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Politics in Contemporary Europe
• International Relations Theory
• Diplomacy and Soft Power
• Nationalism and Political Power
• Introduction to the European Union

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