Kristof Bender

Kristof Bender

Deputy Chairman and Senior Analyst

Kristof Bender (Austria) is ESI's Deputy Chairman. He leads various ESI research projects on EU enlargement and on South Eastern Europe. Educated in sociology in Vienna and Paris, he has worked in South East Europe in various capacities since 1997, including managing higher education projects in Bosnia for the World University Service, as Attaché for Humanitarian Affairs in the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade, as a researcher for the International Centre for Migration Policy Development and as a consultant for various institutions, including the Austrian Federal Chancellery, DFID and SIDA. Part of the ESI team since early 2000, Kristof has been living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, and is currently based in Vienna. He is also a Europe’s Futures fellow at the IWM Vienna (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen), a board member of the Kosovo Civil Society Foundation (KCSF) and an advisory board member of Institute Alternativa (Montenegro).