Máté Szalai, PhD is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University. He obtained his doctoral degree at Corvinus University of Budapest in 2019, where he also worked as an assistant lecturer, a senior lecturer, and later as an associate professor. Besides academic teaching, he worked as a researcher and the coordinator of the Middle East Research Program at the Hungarian Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade between 2015 and 2022. His main fields of research include the international relations of the Gulf region and the foreign and security policy of small states. In 2021, he was a visiting research scholar at The Harriman Institute of Columbia University. Besides numerous journal articles, he is the author of the book entitled The foreign and security policy of smaller Gulf states – Size, power, and regime security in the Middle East published by Taylor & Francis in 2021. His current research focuses on the influence-building activities of small states and Gulf states in the context of the changing global order.

English (fluent)

Italian (intermediate)

Arabic (elementary)

Hungarian (native)