Tonka Kostadinova, PhD, is a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. She is a former diplomat and researcher with a history of working both in international academia and government administration. She has served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bulgaria, where she was responsible for bilateral relations with Greece and Cyprus.

Dr. Kostadinova has extensive academic experience across various institutions, including the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Münster, Charles University – Prague, Center for Advanced Study Sofia, University of Athens, and Bonn Academy of International Affairs.

Dr. Kostadinova authored the monographs “Women, Informal Institutions and Diplomacy” (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming) and “Germany’s Foreign Policy after Reunification, 1990-1998” (Paradigma, 2012). Her work has been published in various book chapters and journals, including The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, and Comparative Southeast European Studies.

Read more from Dr Tonka Kostadinova:

Kostadinova, T. (2026). Women’s empowerment in Southeast European diplomacy: a comparative analysis of Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Greece. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2026.2672236.

Kostadinova, T. (2022). Against the wind of change: an auto-ethnographic account on gender relations in the diplomatic sector of post-communist states. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 17.
(2022): 463-487, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10109.

Kostadinova, T. (2022). Feminist knowledge production in Europe on diplomacy and international negotiation. In: Stern, Maria and Ann Towns, (eds). Feminist IR in Europe. Knowledge production in Academic Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133-152.
https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/feminist-knowledge-production-in-europe-on-diplomacy-and-interna/20177712