Announcing the 2024 Templeton Fellows

April 23, 2024

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is pleased to announce the appointment of its 2024 Templeton Fellows. Recipients of the Templeton Fellowship work across FPRI’s research programs on a variety of projects throughout the year.

The Templeton Fellowships are named for the late John M. Templeton, Jr., M.D., who had a decades-long association with FPRI, serving as Vice Chair of FPRI’s Board of Trustees and, along with his beloved wife, Josephine “Pina” Templeton, generously supported FPRI for many years. We’re deeply grateful to them both and to the Templeton Family and the Psalm 103 Foundation for their support of FPRI and its mission.

Africa Program

Raphael Parens is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Africa Program and the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is an international security researcher focused on Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Parens specializes in small armed groups and NATO modernization processes. He received his MA in international security studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and he is currently based in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

Asia Program

Jeffrey Ding is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Previously, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His research agenda covers emerging technologies and international security, the political economy of innovation, and China’s scientific and technological capabilities. His book manuscript investigates how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for US-China competition in emerging technologies like AI. Dr. Ding’s research has been published or is forthcoming in the European Journal of International Security, Foreign Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, and Security Studies, and his work has been cited in The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and other outlets. He received his PhD in 2021 from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned his BA in 2016 at the University of Iowa.

Sheena Chestnut Greitens is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Associate Professor and Director of the Asia Policy Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on security, authoritarian politics, foreign policy, and East Asia. In 2023-24, she is on leave to serve as a Visiting Associate Professor of Research in Indo-Pacific Security at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. She is also concurrently a Nonresident Scholar with the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Dr. Chestnut Greitens’ first book, Dictators and Their Secret Police (Cambridge, 2016), examined variations in internal security and repression in Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines during the Cold War, and won multiple academic awards. Her second book, Politics of the North Korean Diaspora (Cambridge, 2023), focused on authoritarianism, security, and diaspora politics. She is currently finishing her third book manuscript, which addresses how internal security concerns shape Chinese grand strategy.

Eurasia Program

Antonia Colibasanu is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She is also a Senior Geopolitical Analyst and Chief Operating Officer at Geopolitical Futures. In her latest book, 2022 – The Geoeconomic Roundabout, she discusses the concerns that the new global economic war brings forth, as they were in the making well before the war in Ukraine started. She is also a lecturer on international relations at the Romanian National University of Political Studies and Public Administration and an Associate Senior Expert with the New Strategy Center in Bucharest. Prior to joining Geopolitical Futures in 2016 as a Senior Analyst, Dr. Colibasanu spent more than 10 years with Stratfor in various positions, including as a partner for Europe and vice president for international marketing. She is a trainer on geopolitics for the European Affairs program at the Romanian European Institute. Among other academic credentials, she holds a doctorate in international business and economics from Bucharest’s Academy of Economic Studies, where her thesis focused on country risk analysis and investment decision-making processes within transnational companies.

Olga Khvostunova is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She is also a PhD student at Stony Brook University’s Political Science Department. Previously, she worked as a journalist at the Kommersant newspaper in Moscow and later as an editor and political analyst at the Institute of Modern Russia in New York and the Free Russia Foundation in Washington, DC.

Olena Snigyr is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She is also a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. Her research topic is “Russian strategic narratives of a full-scale war with Ukraine.” Until May 2022, she was responsible for communication and international cooperation of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. From 2001 to 2017, Olena worked at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine (NISS). She headed the Foreign Policy Department in NISS from 2008-2011 and the Sector of Europe in the Foreign Policy Department from 2011-2013. From 2015-2017 she was a chief consultant in the Research Center for Russian Federation Problems in NISS. Later, from 2018-2019, she worked as a leading specialist in the Center for International Studies at Hennadiy Udovenko Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine. Her most recent publications include an analysis of Russia’s foreign policy, specifically its interventionism and undisclosed methods of influence, the role of historical memory in Russian foreign policy, security issues in Europe, the latest developments in Ukrainian foreign policy, and perspectives on the development of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Middle East Program

Selim Koru is a 2024 Templeton Fellow in the Middle East Program and Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV), where his research focuses on Turkish politics and foreign policy. Before TEPAV, he worked and interned at various media organizations. Selim holds a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

National Security Program

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a 2024 Templeton Fellow and the Director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Eurasia Program and Editor of Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs. Gvosdev is a Professor of National Security Affairs, holding the Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in Economic Geography and National Security at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He was formerly the Editor of The National Interest magazine and a Senior Fellow at The Nixon Center in Washington, DC. Gvosdev received his doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. A frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, his work has appeared in such outlets as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Orbis, and he has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BBC. He is the co-author of US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower, and the co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests.

Center for the Study of America and the West

Ronald J. Granieri is a 2024 Templeton Fellow and the Director of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He also hosts People, Politics, and Prose, a monthly event series at FPRI. Granieri is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College. A graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago and a former Federal Chancellor Scholar of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Dr. Granieri is the author of The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949-1966 (Berghahn, 2003) as well as articles on German History, European-American Relations, the Cold War, and contemporary politics in journals such as Orbis, Central European History, Foreign Policy, and The International History Review and has also published op-ed essays in The Hill and the Washington Post.