Leadership
Karina Utegulova is a Policy Analyst and Deputy Programme Director at the Centre for International Security and Economic Strategy (CISES), where she works on economic security, EU governance, and the intersection of law, technology, and geopolitics. She holds a Master’s degree in European Studies (Law and Economics of the EU) from Sapienza University of Rome, with a research focus on cybersecurity, privacy, and cross-border investigations in EU criminal law.
Her work at CISES includes a range of policy briefings on EU digital governance, migration, and economic security. She has published analysis on the EU E-Evidence Regulation and its operational implications for cross-border investigations, as well as on data-driven migration control and the use of AI in EU border governance. Her research also examines broader geopolitical and economic developments, including EU migration policy debates and the use of offshore asylum processing.
In the field of economic security, her work focuses on the growing use of economic instruments as tools of statecraft. She has contributed analysis on critical minerals diplomacy, supply chain restructuring, and the EU’s evolving economic security strategy, including the shift from open strategic autonomy towards a more geoeconomic approach to global competition. As Deputy Programme Director of the Economics and Trade Programme, she contributes to shaping the programme’s analytical direction, supports policy analysts in developing rigorous and policy-relevant work, and promotes research that bridges legal analysis with economic and geopolitical strategy.
“As Deputy Programme Director of the Economics and Trade Programme, I am particularly interested in how economic instruments are increasingly used as tools of geopolitical strategy. I would like the programme to explore how trade, sanctions, and regulatory frameworks shape power dynamics in the international system, while maintaining a strong focus on EU policy developments. My aim is to support the production of clear, analytically rigorous, and policy-relevant work that reflects the evolving nature of economic statecraft.”
Tasneem Ismail is a final-year Philosophy, Politics, and Economics student at King’s College London, with research interests in trade policy, economic statecraft, sanctions, and the economic foundations of national security. She will be pursuing a master’s in Economics following her undergraduate degree.
As Deputy Director of the Economics and Trade Programme, she works to shape the programme’s editorial and strategic direction, and support contributors in producing rigorous, evidence-grounded policy analysis. Her focus areas include sanctions design and enforcement, trade fragmentation, critical supply chains, and the shifting dynamics of the international monetary order. Prior to joining CISES, Tasneem served as Vice President of the KCL Policy Research Centre and Co-Programme Director at FPS KCL, co-ordinating committee operations and managing external partnerships. She completed a data analytics internship at The King’s Trust, contributing policy analysis to Health and Social Care programming strategy.
“As Deputy Director of the Economics and Trade Programme, I am focused on building a programme that takes the economic dimensions of security seriously. Economic tools, from sanctions and export controls to industrial subsidies and trade restrictions, are now central to how states pursue geopolitical influence, and I want the ETP to produce analysis that engages directly with the data and evidence behind these instruments. My aim is to ensure our output is not only analytically precise but also useful to anyone trying to understand how economic statecraft works in practice.”