Fabio Figiaconi

Fabio Figiaconi is a PhD researcher at the Center for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) of the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

His PhD dissertation aims to investigate how Great Powers respond to secondary states’ hedging during competitive eras; in doing so, he focuses on two case-studies: the United States and China’s responses to Singapore’s hedging nowadays, and the United Kingdom and Germany’s responses to the Netherlands’ hedging before World War I.

His research interests include great power competition, great powers/secondary states dynamics, Indo-Pacific geopolitics (with a special focus on Southeast Asia), European Union’s actorness in Asia, theory and practice of Grand Strategy, and United States foreign policy.

He holds two Master’s degrees, one in International Public Policy from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and one in Contemporary History from the University of Milan. Previously, he completed a traineeship at the Political Affairs Division of the European Union’s Delegation to Laos, and another one at the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam.