TEAM
Dr. Hannes Swoboda is the President of the International Institute for Peace (IIP). He started his career in urban politics in Vienna and was elected member of the European Parliament in 1996. He was Vice President of the Social Democrat Group until 2012 and then President until 2014. He was particularly engaged in foreign, enlargement, and neighborhood policies. Swoboda is also President of the Vienna Institute for International Economics, the Centre of Architecture, the University for Applied Science - Campus Vienna, and the Sir Peter Ustinov Institute.
HANNES SWOBODA
President
Mag. Stephanie Fenkart, MA is Director of the International Institute for Peace (IIP) since 2016. She has an MA in Development Studies from the University of Vienna and an MA in Human Rights from the Danube University, Krems. She is furthermore a member of the Advisory Committee for Strategy and Security Policy of the Scientific Commission at the Austrian Armed Forces (BMLV). She is also a board member of the NGO Committee for Peace, Vienna.
Email: s.fenkart@iip.at
Dr.h.c. Angela Kane is the Vice President of the International Institute for Peace (IIP). She is a former senior United Nations diplomat with over 35 years of deep experience in political affairs. She served in New York, as well as in field missions in Ethiopia-Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and Thailand. She is Professor at Schwarzman/Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po). Until August 2024, she worked as a Senior Adviser to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, focusing on catastrophic global risks. She is Senior Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. In 2022, she was appointed by Prime Minister Kishida of Japan as a Member of the International Group of Eminent Persons for a World without Nuclear Weapons. Additional functions include Senior Network Member of the European Leadership Network, and Director of the Board of the Partnership on AI. She sits on a number of non-profit boards in Europe, the United States and Asia, focusing inter alia on geopolitical developments, arms control, and the effects of technology, especially artificial intelligence.
Email: office@iip.at
ANGELA KANE
Vice President
Univ. Prof. Dr. Heinz Gärtner chairs the Advisory Board of the International Institute for Peace (IIP). He is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna and at Danube University. He was academic director of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. Strategy and Security advisory board of the Austrian Armed Forces and theHe has held various Fulbright Fellowships and the Austrian Chair at Stanford University. He was Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. Among other things, Gärtner chairs the Strategy and Security advisory board of the Austrian Armed Forces. He has published widely on international security, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, US foreign policy, geopolitics, Iran, and the Middle East.
Email: heinz.gaertner@univie.ac.at
STEPHANIE FENKART
Director
Marylia Hushcha, MA is a Researcher and Project Manager at the International Institute for Peace (IIP) in Vienna, where she focuses on geopolitics in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. Marylia previously worked at Pontis Foundation in Slovakia, where she managed a capacity-building project for NGOs in Russia. Marylia has completed training and fellowship programmes at the United Nations Office in Belarus, the European Academy of Diplomacy in Warsaw, and the University of San Diego. She holds a Master’s degree in European Studies from Comenius University in Bratislava.
Email: m.hushcha@iip.at
MARYLIA HUSHCHA
Researcher and Project Manager
Samuel Kerschbaumer Gasparini, MA is a Project Assistant at the International Institute for Peace (IIP) in Vienna. Samuel studied Political Science at the University of Vienna, specializing in International Political Economy. He subsequently completed a Master’s degree in International Relations at the Centre International de Formation Européenne (CIFE), studying in Germany, France, and Türkiye. He is a Research Fellow for International Economic Relations at EPIS and works as a Project Manager at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Vienna.
Email: office@iip.at
Samuel Kerschbaumer Gasparini
Project Assistant
HEINZ GÄRTNER
Chair of the IIP Advisory Board
Gjergj Loka, MA is a Project Coordinator at the International Institute for Peace (IIP), focusing primarily on the Western Balkans. He earned a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, following a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations, and Journalism and Mass Communication from the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). Gjergj is a former Youth member of the United Nations Association of Albania (UNAA) in Tirana and has also worked with Network 20/20 in New York, where he helped connect emerging young professionals from the Western Balkans with different stakeholders.
Email: g.loka@iip.at
Gjergj Loka
Project Coordinator