Dr. Brice Didier is the Paul (1969) and Melonie Brophy Postdoctoral Fellow in European Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, Security Studies Program. His research lies at the intersection of EU studies and international relations, security studies and foreign policy analysis, with a dual focus on informal and ad hoc arrangements in EU foreign policy and European security, and the EU’s multifaceted adaptation to a changing world order. He serves as co-convenor of the British International Studies Association (BISA)’s European Security Working Group.
Brice holds a PhD from the University of Geneva, Switzerland (2024), where his dissertation examined the European Union (EU)’s foreign and security policy and the dual challenge of effectiveness and legitimacy surrounding ad hoc initiatives by informal groupings of EU member states –for which he conducted an in-depth analysis of the ‘Balkan Contact Group’ on Bosnia and Kosovo, the ‘E3’ on the Iran nuclear issue, and the ‘Normandy’ initiative on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in Eastern Ukraine. As part of his doctoral training, he was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, and a visiting scholar at the European Parliament Research Service (EPRS) in Brussels, Belgium. His dissertation received the Global Strategy PhD Prize 2024, jointly awarded by the European Security and Defence College and the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations.
His work has notably been published in International Affairs, the Journal of European Integration, the European Review of International Studies, the Journal of Contemporary European Research, Routledge Studies in Foreign Policy Analysis, as well as in other academic and policy outlets. His previous work on transatlantic relations received the UACES Luke Foster Best Article Runner-up Prize 2022 and the Sergio Lopez Perona Memorial Prize 2017.
Before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brice was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Paris, France, where he conducted research on the EU’s navigation of the US-China strategic competition for which he won a DGRIS-IRSEM ‘International Relations and Strategy’ grant, and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where he worked on UK-EU post-Brexit relations in foreign and security policy. He was also a lecturer in EU studies at the University of Geneva, an adjunct lecturer in international security with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and previously served as a full-time teaching fellow in international relations at the University of Geneva and as academic assistant in transatlantic affairs at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium (with the Fletcher School at Tufts University). His curriculum includes core and specialized modules in political science, international relations, international security, and EU studies, as well as research methods and epistemology –including through supervision– at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He has also been a guest lecturer in several graduate, doctoral, and executive education programs in Europe. He is qualified for Associate Professor (Maître de Conférences) in Political Science by the French National Council of Universities (CNU Section 04).
Prior to his PhD, Brice graduated from the College of Europe in Bruges (MA in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies), the Ecole Normale Supérieure Ulm and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (MA in Geopolitics), and Sciences Po Rennes (MA in European and International Affairs, Master’s in Risk Management, Bachelor’s in Public Administration). He worked for the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN) in Paris, France.