Zoran Nechev specialises in EU-Western Balkans relations, external dimensions of justice and home affairs, corrosive capital, and malign external influences. He currently heads the Center for EU Integration at the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” (IDSCS), a think tank in North Macedonia. Since July 2021, Zoran Nechev has been an associate fellow at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP). He is a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) and was a member of the 2021/22 cohort of the Europe’s Futures Fellows programme at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) in Vienna. Previously, he was an academic guest at the Center for International and Comparative Studies at ETH Zürich, where he examined the effects of the EU’s conditionality policy with Professor Frank Schimmelfennig. As a senior associate fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), he was involved in activities related to global strategy,  resilience, and Balkan futures. Today, he is a PhD candidate at the Institute for European Studies at  Vrije Universiteit Brussel.