Francesca Ghiretti is a research leader at RAND Europe. Working primarily in Defence and Security, she leads work on economic security. She is also an expert in economic security, China’s foreign policy, and Europe-China relations and an adjunct fellow (Non-Resident) at the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, she worked as senior geoeconomics fellow at a London-based AI company and as analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), Europe’s largest think tank on China. She spent a semester as visiting fellow with the Asia Programme of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Ghiretti also worked as research fellow Asia at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), where she led a project on the Belt and Road Initiative, as geopolitical analyst for a London-based hedge fund, and as an assistant to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former secretary general of NATO. She is the author of "Chinese Investments and the Economic Security Turn in Europe. Where economy and security meet" (Bristol University Press, January 2025). Ghiretti’s writing and commentary have appeared in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Politico. She received her Ph.D. from the Centre for Grand Strategy, Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her thesis, "The securitization of Chinese foreign direct investments in the EU", which explored how an economic means becomes a security issue, received the Outstanding Thesis Award.
Ph.D. in international relations, international political economy and security studies, King's College London; M.Sc. in international relations and diplomacy, Leiden University
