Michal Kořan is the President of the Board of the Global Arena Research Institute and the former Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Central Europe. Until June 2017, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations based in Prague (Czech Republic) where he previously acted as a Deputy Director (2013 – 2016) and a Head of Research (2009 – 2013). He is also an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University in Brno, where he received his Ph.D. in 2008.

In 2012 he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at the Harvard University. He focuses on foreign policy analysis of the Central European countries, Central European sub-regional cooperation and Central Europe in European and World Affairs and in Trans-Atlantic Relations. He is the lead-author of an annual book analysing Czech foreign policy and founder and programme chair of an annual International Symposium Czech Foreign Policy. In 2013 – 2014 he was a vice-chairman of the Programm Council of the Czech-Polish Forum.

He was a main coordinator of the Strategic Grant of the International Visegrad Fund The Visegrad Group in the Post-Lisbon EU: Getting Closer to Move Further and he is a co-founder and national co-coordinator of the Think Visegrad platform. He was also main researcher of a multi-year grant project Czech Foreign Policy and the Post-Western Global Order. His texts have been published, among others, in journals European Security, Osteuropa, Perspectives, Journal of International Relations and Development and in publishing houses Palgrave, Routledge or Rowman and Littlefield.

Michal has delivered numerous invited speeches at institutions including Harvard University, John Hopkins University, Wilson Centre, University of Pennsylvania, Polish Institute of International Affairs, the Diplomatic Academy in Wien and the European Economic Forum in Katowice.