Adjunct Prof. Dr. Alfred Gerstl, MIR is an Austrian political scientist, specialized on International Relations, in particular in East Asia. He currently holds a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at Palacký University in Olomouc (Czech Republic) and is President of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). He was previously lecturer at the University of Vienna and Macquarie University in Sydney and Associate Professor at Novosibirsk State University (Russia). He wrote his PhD on the history and development of the liberal parties in Austria.