Biography
Navy Captain (OF-5) Kurt Engelen is a senior researcher at the Centre for Security and Defence Studies (CSDS), where his research fields include Eastern Europe – with a focus on Russian foreign policy and war doctrine –, the Arctic region and strategic foresight analysis in the security domain.
Kurt Engelen is a Belgian navy officer with a combined military, industry and academic background in international politics and conflict studies. During his latest assignments, he was a staff officer in charge of cooperative security and crisis management at the Belgian military representation to NATO (2015-2018), Head of the European Union section at the Belgian Defence staff strategy department (2018-2020), Belgian Delegate to the Politico-Military Group of the Council of the EU (2020-2022) and, Defence Counsellor to the Ambassador of Belgium to the Political and Security Committee (2022-2024). During his tenure at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the EU, he held the positions of Deputy Military Representative (2022-2023) and Acting Military Representative to the EU Military Committee (March-June 2023). He has also represented Belgium in the Steering Committee of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) (2022-2024).
On the academic front, he is a guest lecturer in international politics at the Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia and at the West University of Timisoara in Romania. He also teaches European affairs, crisis management and multilateral negotiations at the Belgian Defence College. Before joining the CSDS in 2024, Captain Engelen was already a regular guest lecturer and conference panellist at the Belgian Royal Higher Institute for Defence (RHID), at the ESDC and at various academic institutions and think tanks in Belgium and abroad.
Captain Engelen holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from the Higher Institute of Translators and Interpreters (Brussels) as well as a master’s degree in international politics from the CERIS-ULB Diplomatic School of Brussels. He also holds a General Management Certificate from the Cambridge Judge Business School (United Kingdom) and a Certificate of Innovation Management from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management (Cambridge, Massachusetts). He completed the CSDP High Level Course, the European Advanced Strategic Course on Security and Defence and the course on European Security and Geo-economics at the ESDC.