Prof. Dr. Florian Trauner is a Director of the Research Centre for Migration, Diversity and Justice (C-MDJ) and holds the Jean Monnet Chair 'EXPAND - Explaining Resilience in EU Justice and Home Affairs'. Together with Ilke Adam, he also coordinates the VUB Interdisciplinary Centre of Expertise on Migration and Minorities (BIRMM). 

Florian Trauner’s research is interested in the European integration process with a focus on EU asylum, migration, forcible return and counter-terrorism policies (including the linkages between European home affairs policies and foreign affairs/external relations). His work has appeared in prominent journals such as West European Politics, the Journal for European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Integration, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Prof. Trauner has (co-)directed projects dealing with EU-West African migration cooperation (funded by the United Nations University UNU-CRIS) and the role of supranational EU institutions in Justice and Home Affairs (funded by the Austrian Science Fund). At present, he leads a workpackage in the Horizon-2020 project BRIDGES on the production and impact of migration narratives and directs an ERC Runner-up project on ‘coercive EU mobility rules’ funded by the Flemish Research Fund (FWO).

Florian Trauner is a regular Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Natolin Campus) and has taught or worked at the University of Vienna, Renmin University of China (in Beijing), Sciences Po Paris and the EU Institute for Security Studies. He also acted as an external expert for the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the International Centre for Migration Policy Development. Prof. Trauner will chair the seventh edition of the ‘European Union in International Affairs’ (EUIA) conference, which is a major forum for academics and policy-makers to debate the international role of the EU.