Olivia Toderean is a Romanian diplomat, former director of policy planning (2006-2010, 2016-2020), former deputy to Romania’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, currently serving as director general for global affairs in the Romanian MFA. She is also an IR scholar, with an MA degree at the University of Manchester (1999) and a PhD at National School of Political Science and Public Administration (Bucharest, 2006).

She is the author or editor of a number of books in IR and Gender Studies, and of articles on IR Theories, Theories of Development, Gender in IR, foreign policy analysis. She has been the translator in Romanian of several books in the same fields, some of them pioneering Gender Studies in Romania.

She has been a grantee of the Civic Education Project (Romania), Michigan University (US), Sussex University (UK), Central European University (Hungary) and European University Institute (Florence, Italy).

Her latest publications, as co-editor, include two collections of essays by Romanian and foreign authors on the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in various fields of national and international public life (Lumea de mâine. Ce urmează după pandemie? Curtea Veche, 2020 and Post-Pandemic World: Perspectives on Foreign and Security Policy, Curtea Veche, 2020).

She has been awarded two public distinctions of Diplomatic Merit by Decree of the President of Romania, in 2007 (medal) and in 2019 (decoration in the rank of knight).