Brussels Staff Profiles

Dr. Palo is an Associate Professor of History at Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He received a BA in History (1966) and an MA in History (1969) from Queens College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in History (1978) from the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana). Prof. Paul W. Schroeder (emeritus) directed his doctoral Dissertation, entitled “The Diplomacy of Belgian War Aims During the First World War.”

Before coming to Vesalius College in 1990, Dr. Palo served as director of study abroad programs in France for Illinois State University (Grenoble, January 1979-June 1984) and for the University of Notre Dame (Angers, September 1986-June 1990). He is a member of the American Historical Association, the Association Belge d’Histoire Contemporaine/Belgische Vereninging voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis, and Phi Alpha Theta, the International History Honor Society. His fields of interest include nineteenth-and twentieth-century diplomatic history, the history of the world wars, Belgian history, historiography, and contemporary international relations. His publications include: an article entitled “The Question of Neutrality and Belgium’s Security Dilemma during the First World War: The Search for a Politically Acceptable Solution,” which appeared in the July 2000 issue of the Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis (Ghent), vol. XXIX, nos. 1-2, pp. 227-304; and an article entitled “‘Dad, what did you do in the war?’ A Postmodernist? Classroom Exercise” in The History Teacher (Long Beach, California) 33, no. 2 (February 2000), 193-212.

He is currently working on a textbook that will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of international relations and conflict from 1815 to the present.

Sari Kouvo co-founded AAN in 2009, building on extensive experience as Human Rights and Rule of Law Adviser to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan (2004-2006), and Senior Program Fellow at the International Centre for Transitional Justice (2007-2011).

She holds a doctorate in International Law from Gothenburg University (Sweden), where she also worked as a Lecturer. She has held visiting fellowships at the NATO Defense College (Italy), Kent Law School (UK), Abo Academy (Finland) and the Australian National University.

Among her recent publications is the collection Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law (Oxford: Hart, 2011), co-edited with Zoe Pearson.

Dr Gross is a Senior Research Fellow for European Foreign and Security Policy at the Institute of European Studies (IES). Her research interests include the role of the EU as a global actor, the Europeanization of national foreign and security policy, transatlantic relations, and EU conflict prevention and crisis management policies, particularly towards the Western Balkans and Afghanistan.

Eva Gross holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies (2008), the Center for European Policy Studies/CEPS (2006) and CERI Sciences Po (2005). In 2005/06 Eva Gross was a fellow of the European Foreign and Security Policy Studies Program of the VolkswagenStiftung, Germany, the Compagnia di San Paolo, Turin and the Rijksbanken Jubilaeumsfond, Stockholm.

Eva Gross is a former editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies (volume 32) and former Associate Production Manager of the European Journal of International Relations (February 2004-December 2006), both at the LSE, where she was also a class teacher at the Department of International Relations.

Professor A.J.R. Groom was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations, and is Emeritus Professor of International Relations.

He was educated at University College London, Lehigh University and the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva from which he received his doctorate. He received a Doctorate honoris causa from the University of Tampere in Finland in May 2000. He is an Honorary (Guest) Professor of Renmin People’s University in Beijing and teaches regularly at Sciences-Po Paris and Lille and the Diplomatische Akademie in Vienna. He is visiting Professor in Politics at Canterbury Christchurch University.

He has been particularly active in professional associations having been the Founder and for ten years Chairman of the European Standing Group for International Relations, Chairman of BISA and Vice-President of ISA. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research and is currently Executive Secretary of the World International Studies Committee (WISC).

He has published 16 books and over 160 articles and chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Organisation, Conflict and Strategic Studies, European International Relations and British foreign and defence policy. He is Editor of Global Society.

John Groom’s other interests are in opera and music, food and wine, and travel and he is a fervent supporter of Lincoln City Football Club.

Erik Franckx serves as President of the Belgian Society of International Law since 2017 and is currently a Research Professor at the VUB, and Director of its Centre for International Law.
An internationally acclaimed expert on the Law of the Sea, he sits on the Advisory Body of Experts on the Law of the Sea of the International Oceanographic Commission, and on the roster of Experts in Marine Boundary Delimitation of the International Hydrographic Organization. In 2006 Belgium appointed him as Member to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, and in 2014 as Arbitrator under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Ilse Derluyn obtained her PhD in Pedagogical Sciences at Ghent University with a dissertation on the emotional well-being of unaccompanied refugee minors. From 2000 until 2002, after obtaining her master in orthopedagogics (special education) at Ghent University, she worked as a music therapist in a psychiatric hospital. Since 2002, she has worked as a researcher at the Department of Orthopedagogics – Ghent University, first as doctoral researcher, and now as post-doctoral researcher, both with grants from the Special Research Fund of Ghent University.

Ilse Derluyn is currently teaching courses on migration, refugee health, interculturalisation and diversity at Ghent University (master in pedagogical sciences and master in social work). Derluynjoins the University of Kent at Brussels as Visiting Lecturer in Humanitarian Issues in Forced Migration.

Paul Cook has been the Director of the Economics and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly since January 1997 and is also the Director of the Research Assistant Programme.

Dr. Cook has a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He authored the biography of the Italian intellectual, resistance leader and post-war statesman Ugo La Malfa, which the Italian publishing house Il Mulino published in 1999. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Rome from 1993 – 1994 and earned a Master of Arts degree in European Studies and International Economics from The Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), Washington, D.C. and Bologna, Italy. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies, from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

From 1994 to 1996 Dr. Cook was a Course Instructor in Post-War European Political and Economic History and Contemporary European Politics at SAIS. He also worked for the Washington Foundation for European Studies and Beri S.A. a financial risk-consulting firm. From 1987 until 1991 Dr. Cook was a Fellow and Deputy Director for European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington where he wrote on European-American relations and the end of the Cold War. He has published a number of articles on trans-Atlantic economic and security relations. He is fluent in Italian and French.

Dr Carrera is Head of Section, Justice and Home Affairs and a Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies. He holds a PhD. on immigration, integration and citizenship from the Universiteit Maastricht, an LL.M. in European, Comparative and International Law from Maastricht and a B.A. in Law (Specialisation in European Union Law) from the Universidad de Salamanca.

Kieran Bradley is currently a Judge to the European Union Civil Service Tribunal having previously been the Head of the Legislation Unit of the European Parliament’s Legal Service. Before that he served as a référendaire at the European Court of Justice, and as an administrator on the secretariat of the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs.

In Spring 2000, he was the first ‘Distinguished Lecturer on European Law’ at Harvard Law School, and he has also taught courses on EC law at various other universities and higher level educational institutes, such as the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the East-West Forum (Academy of European Law, Fiesole), the College of Europe (Natolin Campus, Warsaw). He has also taught at the National University of Singapore, at the University of Melbourne, Australia and since 2005 at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. In 2003-2004, he served on both groups of legal experts advising on the drafting of the Constitution for Europe. He has published extensively in a number of areas of EC law, particularly institutional law.