Martin Kahanec

Professor at the Department of Public Policy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. Member of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission (5/2025 - present) and laureate of the 2025 ESET Science Award in the main category "outstanding scientist" in Slovakia. 

Director of CEU's Shattuck Center for Human Rights. Dean of CEU's School of Public Policy in 2017-19 and 2020-21; Head of CEU's Department of Public Policy (2021-2023).

Founder and Scientific Director of CELSI, Bratislava (2008-). Affiliated Researcher at the University of Economics in Bratislava and the Centre for Population, Development and Labour Economics (POP), MERIT, United Nations University, Maastricht. Affiliated Scholar and member of the Advisory Board at the Global Labor Organization.  Research Fellow (2005-2015), Deputy Program Director "Migration" (2007-2016), and Deputy Director of Research (2009) at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard University's Labor and Worklife Program 2014/15. Mercator Senior Visiting Fellow (2019-20) at Bruegel, Brussels.

Member of the Council of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Science, Technology and Innovation; former member of the national COVID-19 Economic Crisis Management Council at the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic; Minister's advisory council (2020-2021); and the Scientific Board of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic.

Vice-President, member of the Board of Trustees, and Chair of the Class for Social and Related Sciences of Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences (1/2025-5/2025, stepped down to join the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the EC). Elected to join the Academia in 2016, he served as Chair of its Section Committee "Economics, Business and Management Sciences" from 2021 to 2024. Member, Fellow, and former President of the Slovak Economic Association (2016-2018).

His main research interests are economic policy, labor and population economics, migration, EU mobility, integration and ethnicity, inequalities, and reforms in European labor markets. Martin Kahanec has published extensively in peer-reviewed academic journals and has edited and contributed to several scientific book volumes and journal special issues.

Associate Editor of the International Journal of Manpower and Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies; Editorial Board member of Economic Systems and Acta Oeconomica; founding Managing Editor of the IZA Journal of European Labor Studies (2012-2016, included in Scopus under Kahanec's editorship); and former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of European Social Policy andTransfer: European Review of Labour and Research.

Martin Kahanec has held several advisory positions and leading roles in a number of scientific and policy projects with the World Bank, the European Commission, European Parliament, European Court of Auditors, OECD, and other international and national institutions.

Martin Kahanec earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 2006 from the Center for Economic Research (CentER), Tilburg University, the Netherlands.