Apostolov, Mario

Dr. Mario Apostolov was a Visiting Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS, first virtually from November 2020 until 14 June 2022 and in person from 15 June 2022 until 12 August 2022. Mario Apostolov is Regional Adviser at the UN Economic Commission for Europe, providing support to the transition economies in trade facilitation and electronic business, and he coordinates at UNECE the United Nations Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA). He has also supported other cooperation networks in Southeast Europe, the Black Sea and other UNECE sub-regions. He has expertise in trade facilitation reforms, national trade facilitation bodies, the Single Window concept for export and import clearance, digitalisation of trade information flows, and regional trade integration.

He holds an MA degree in International relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva. He teaches a course on the Dynamics of Regional Cooperation and Diplomacy at the International University in Geneva. He has published books with Routledge, Ashgate and the United Nations in such diverse areas as trade facilitation, regional integration, and the geopolitics of Christian-Muslim relations (a topic on which he did a post-doctoral project and published a book on the Christian-Muslim Frontier: A zone of contact, conflict or cooperation (Routledge, 2004).

Mario Apostolov’s research interests include comparative regionalism: the dynamics of regional cooperation and integration in the different regions of the world: both in terms of comparing the economic, historical, and socio-political environments in which various regional entities evolve, and in terms of finding those shared features, which can allow the definition of a common denominator (a set of common general principles/features of regional cooperation and integration). In this sense, working with the UNU-CRIS research network, he prepared a publication on the principles of regional cooperation and a brainstorming event involving experts from academia, regional cooperation institutions, and others, to explore the definition of core features of regional cooperation/integration.