Dr Alica Kizeková

Dr. Alica Kizeková works as a Lecturer of international relations, security and strategic studies at the Faculty of Humanities, School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. She collaborates as a Senior Research Fellow with the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA). Her current research focuses on South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy and responses to minilateral initiatives (AUKUS, the Quad, etc.). In her previous work, she researched the EU-South Korean cooperation,  South Korea-EU democratic promotion and global governance and The Czech Republic-South Korea relations. She also co-organised three conferences on South Korea-Central Europe relations and coordination of activities in the Indo-Pacific with the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Prague and the Faculty of International Relations of the Prague University of Economics and Business.

Prior to joining Curtin University in 2024, Alica worked as a Senior Researcher and the Head of the Asia-Pacific Unit at the Institute of International Relations (IIR) in Prague in the Czech Republic, where she coordinated activities related to engagements with South Korea and the Think Visegrad V4 Think-Tank Platform. In 2015-2017, she was an expert adviser and speechwriter on Asia and the EU to the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic and was a member of the official delegation at the 2nd Meeting of Speakers of Eurasian Countries’ Parliaments in Seoul in June 2017.

She also worked as the Head of the Department of Asian Studies and an academic at the Metropolitan University of Prague (2014-2015), a Visiting Fellow at RSIS at NTU in Singapore and a National Contact Point and a Ministerial Adviser for the Slovak Republic in the European Union communitary program – IDABC (Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public administrations, businesses and citizens). She pursued her PhD by research in International Relations at Bond University in Queensland in Australia where she lectured courses on international relations, diplomacy and geopolitics (2005-2023).  Her broader professional interests include regionalism, multilateralism, geopolitics, democratisation, soft balancing, great power relations, state strategies and security in Central Europe, Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.