Dr. Ivana Karásková is a Researcher at Supply Chain Resilience Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. She is also a China Team Lead at Association for International Affairs (AMO), a Prague-based independent foreign policy think tank and a non-governmental organization. 

She founded and has been coordinating two international projects on China: MapInfluenCE which analyzes China and Russia’s influence in Central Europe, and China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE), a think net bringing together more than 130 China researchers from 30 different countries, analyzing China’s activities in Europe. From April 2023 to March 2024, she was a Special Advisor to the Vice-President of the European Commission and an EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová. 

She advised on tackling Chinese interference in Europe for the draft of the Defense of Democracy package. Since 2020, she has been a European China Policy Fellow at Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Germany. She is a Czech representative at China expert pool at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) in Helsinki, Finland. Ivana holds Ph.D. in International Relations and other university degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication, European Studies and International Relations. 

She completed research and study stays in China (Fudan University, East China Normal University), Tai- wan (Chengchi University, Tamkang University) and the United States (Fulbright scholar at Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York). She is an alumna of International Visitors’ Leadership Program (IVLP) on investment screening and an alumna of German Marshall Fund 2023 Young Strategists Forum in Japan. 

Ivana briefed NATO, testified at the US Congress and the European Parliament’s hearings on e.g. Chinese foreign policy, China’s influence in Europe and Sino-Russian confluence. She presented her research to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Canada’s House of Commons, German Parliament (Bundestag), the Belgian Senate, etc. She was quoted in The New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, South China Morning Post, Deutsche Welle, Le Monde, France24, etc.