Lucian N. Leustean

Room: NW 812 
Phone: 0121 204 3767
Email: [email protected]

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 British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Commission, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Leverhulme Trust, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Washington D.C. In 2023, he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

He is the author and editor of twelve books, including Religious Failure, Geopolitics, and Forced Displacement in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the South Caucasus (Central European University Press, 2026), 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), 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). A French translation of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe was published under the title Les religions et l’Europe. Panorama et perspectives contemporaines (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2025).

He is the Founding Editor of the Routledge Book Series Religion, Society, and Government in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet States.

In 2026-2028, he is Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship: 'Religion and the Cold War. The Church of England and the Orthodox East'.

• Religion, Politics and Development
• 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