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 and European Integration (M.A.), Law (B.A.) and Theology (B.A.) in Bucharest, Romania, and completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

His research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan, University of Tokyo, 2023), Fordham University, New York (Senior Fellow, Orthodoxy and Human Rights Scholars Project, 2019-2023), the British Academy (the Sustainable Development Programme of the Global Challenges Research Fund, 2018-2021), the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, 2018-2020), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Amsterdam (Fellow in residence, 2018-2019), the Westminster Abbey Institute, London (Fellow, 2015-2016), the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington D.C. (Senior Fellow, 2014-2015), and the Economic and Social Research Council (Principal Investigator Research Grant, 2010-2011). In 2023, he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award in recognition of 'outstanding accomplishments in research' from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

He is the author and editor of twelve books and journal special issues, including The Ecumenical Movement and the Making of the European Community (Oxford University Press, 2014), 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), Religion and Forced Displacement in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (with Victoria Hudson, Amsterdam University Press, 2022), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (with Grace Davie, Oxford University Press, 2021), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014) and Religion, Politics and Law in the European Union (with John T.S. Madeley, 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 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

• Ph.D. (Political Science) London School of Economics and Political Science
• M.A. (International Relations and European Integration); B.A. (Law); B.A. (Theology) Bucharest