BIO

Luuk van Middelaar is the founding Director of Brussels Institute for Geopolitics since its establishment in 2022. Political theorist, historian, and author of the prizewinning The Passage to Europe (2013), he recently published Le Réveil géopolitique de l’Europe (2022), Pandemonium (2021) and Alarums and Excursions (2019), groundbreaking accounts of the Union’s crisis politics.

He is a professor of EU law at Leiden University and columnist for NRC Handelsblad, previously he was an advisor and copywriter for Frits Bolkestein and Jozias van Aartsen, respectively. From December 2009 to November 2014, he was part of the cabinet of European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

He received the Prix de Paris from the French ambassador in September 1999 for his book Policitide and the Nova Civitas Freedom Prize in 2002. In 2010, he received the Socrates Wisselbeker, prize for the best Dutch-language philosophy book, for De passage naar Europa. History of a Beginning.