PC & CDS – Gerald Knaus

Gerald Knaus is the founder and chairman of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), a Berlin-based think tank (www.esiweb.org) working on South-eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and the future of European enlargement.   He studied at the University of Oxford, the University of Brussels ’ Institute d’Etudes Européennes and at SAIS in Bologna, taught macroeconomics at the State University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine (1992-1993) and worked for five years in Bulgaria and Bosnia for NGOs and international organizations. He was director of the Lessons Learned Unit of the EU Pillar of the UN Mission in Kosovo (from 2001 to 2004).

Gerald wrote a book about post-socialist Bulgaria (CB Beck, Munich, 1996) and published many articles, including Travails of the European Raj on Bosnia (2003) and Member State Building and the Helsinki Moment on the EU role in the Balkans (2004).He co-authored 57 ESI reports since 1999, including Islamic Calvinists (2005) and most recently Sex and Power in Turkey (2007), as well as numerous scripts for TV documentaries on South East Europe.  He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, of the advisory board of the European Policy Centre in Brussels and a 2007 Open Society Fellow.  Since 2004 he lives in Istanbul. 

Some recent ESI publications on the Balkans:

On Mount Olympus.  How the UN violated human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina and why nothing has been done to correct it (2007)

Cutting the Lifeline. Migration, Families and the Future of Kosovo (2006)

Bosnia  : post-industrial society and the authoritarian temptation (2004)

The Lausanne Principle: Multiethnicity, Territory and the Future of Kosovo Serbs (2004)

The Road to Thessaloniki : Cohesion and the Western Balkans (2003)

Ahmeti's Village. The Political Economy Of Interethnic Relations In Macedonia (2002)