Associate Prof. Mag.Dr. Alfred Gerstl, MIR

AIES Board Member und Senior Advisor

Assoc. Prof. Mag. Dr. Alfred Gerstl, MIR is an International Relations (IR) specialist with a focus on the Indo-Pacific, notably Southeast Asia. He is interested in the geopolitical impacts of the Sino-US rivalry, the EU’s role in the Indo-Pacific, hedging strategies, China's Belt and Road Initiative (including the impacts on Central Eastern Europe) as well as regional cooperation and crises in Southeast and Northeast Asia (ASEAN, South China Sea, terrorism). In addition, he has expert knowledge on the East Asian political and economic systems. He studied Political Science at the University of Vienna, where he also defended his habilitation thesis, and IR at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Since 2018 Alfred Gerstl is Senior AIES Advisor and since 2020 AIES Board Member. In addition, he is since 2018 Associate Professor at Palacký University in Olomouc (Department of Asian Studies). Since 2022, he leads the EU-funded research project „The EU in the volatile Indo-Pacific Region“ (EUVIP). Before, he was Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow and senior researcher in the EU project „Sinophone Borderlands – Interactions at the Edges" (2018–2022). Furthermore, he is president of the transnational think tank Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). In 2018/19, he was Associate Professor at the Department for Oriental Studies at Novosibirsk State University (NSU) and at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg in Russia.

From 2013 until 2018, Alfred Gerstl worked as Postdoc Researcher (Assistant Prof.) at the Department of East Asian Studies/East Asian Economy and Society (EcoS) at the University of Vienna. He is still lecturer at this Department as well as at the Department of Development Studies.

Moreover, he regularly lectures at Danube University Krems, the Austrian National Defence Academy and the Theresian Military Academy. Previously, he was researcher and lecturer at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) and lecturer at University of Applied Sciences Kufstein and the University of Passau. He also worked as researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. Furthermore, Alfred Gerstl was founding director of the non-university research institute South-East Asian Studies (SEAS) and the founding editor-in-chief of the Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies (ASEAS).