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United Kingdom Mark Leonard is a British political scientist and author, renowned for co-founding and directing the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Mark Leonard is the co-founder and director of the ECFR, the first pan-European think-tank. He focuses on geopolitics, geoeconomics, China, and EU politics and institutions.
Mark Leonard has been writing a syndicated column on global affairs for Project Syndicate, an international media organization, since 2004.
Mark Leonard is a regular contributor to The Guardian, writing comment pieces and analysis on European politics, foreign policy, and international relations.
Penguin published Mark Leonard's book 'The Age of Unpeace. How Connectivity Causes Conflict' in September 2021.
Mark Hugo Leonard, born on August 27, 1974, is a distinguished British political scientist and author. He is the son of Dick Leonard, a writer and journalist, and Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, a professor of German literature. He completed his early education at the European School, Brussels I, earning a European Baccalaureate. He then pursued higher education at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied social and political sciences and served as the chairman of the Cambridge Organisation of Labour Students in 1994–1995.
Leonard’s career includes significant roles in various think tanks. He founded the Foreign Policy Centre at the age of 24, operating under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Subsequently, he held the position of director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform. In October 2007, he co-founded the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the first pan-European think-tank, where he currently serves as director. His work at ECFR focuses on geopolitics, geoeconomics, China, and EU politics, among other areas. He also hosts the weekly podcast “Mark Leonard’s World in 30 Minutes” and contributes a syndicated column on global affairs to Project Syndicate.
Throughout his career, Leonard has been a prolific writer and commentator. His report “Britain™” during his time at Demos in the 1990s is noted for launching the “Cool Britannia” initiative. He has spent time as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as the Henry A Kissinger chair in foreign policy and international relations at the US Library of Congress, and as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences in Beijing. His publications include best-selling books such as “Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century” (2005), “What Does China Think?” (2008), an edited volume on “Connectivity Wars,” and “The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict” (2021). Leonard is also a member of the UK Soft Power Council and the UK Foreign Secretary’s External Foreign Policy Board.
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