Kurt Engelen holds an M.A. in International Politics from the Centre Européen de Recherches Internationales et Stratégiques (CERIS) and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the Higher School Lucien Cooremans (Brussels). During his career, he continued his studies and research at the Stockholm School of Economics, at the Loyola University of Chicago, at Cambridge University Judge Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management in Boston and at the University of Geneva.
After a mixed career as business director in several international corporate groups and as a Commander in the Belgian Navy, he currently serves as a staff officer at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the Military Committee of NATO where he specialized in political-military affairs.
On the academic side, he is a non-resident research fellow at the Centre for Security and Strategic Research of the National Defence Academy of Latvia and teaches International Politics at the Riga Graduate School of Law (Latvia) and at the Royal Military Academy (Belgium). His fields of interest are the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, Russian and Chinese Foreign Policies and complex conflict situations. He is regularly invited as guest lecturer and as panelist for conferences on international security and geopolitics.
He is the Vice-President of the Euro-Atlantic Association of Belgium and a board member of Euro-Defense Belgium.