Thomas Renard is currently a Research Fellow at EGMONT (Royal Institute for International Relations) in Brussels. He is a member of the Reseau Multidisciplinaire d'Etudes Stratégiques (RMES) and a founding member of Alliance Géostratégique.
He is regularly invited to lecture in the College of Europe (Bruges), Ghent University (UGent) and Catholic University of Louvain (UCL). He also appears frequently in international media.
He is also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation and heads their Brussels office.
He is a PhD student at Ghent University. He holds a M.A. from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. His research focus is on Terrorism and European Security. He has also an interest in transnational and unconventional threats.
In the past, Thomas Renard was a regular contributor to the Global Terrorism Analysis of the Jamestown Foundation, to which he still contributes. He was also a correspondent in Washington DC for Le Soir, the main French-speaking newspaper in Belgium and a Consultant at the Center for Global Counterterrorism Cooperation as well as (later and for a shorter period) an Associate Researcher at the World Security Institute in Brussels.
Previously, Thomas Renard worked at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). Under the direction of Geoffrey Dabelko, he participated in the research on the connections between environment, population, health, and security. He was a contributor to the New Security Beat ECSP’s blog.
During the summer 2007, Mr. Renard had the chance to work for the Belgian Armed Forces’ Strategy Department. He wrote an 80-page report on the relationship between climate change and international security. His study was presented to the officers, distributed to the relevant personnel, and made available on the Army’s intranet. The report had two main purposes: define a new orientation in the Belgian military strategy, and adapt the BAF’s capabilities to the future needs.
In 2005-2006, Mr Renard was a research assistant at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS) in Washington DC. He participated in the development of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Requested by the Department of Homeland Security, the GTD has become one of the largest and most systematic databases on terrorism.
Mr. Renard received his Bachelors degree in International Relations, and his Masters degree in Journalism from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. His Bachelor's thesis was about public diplomacy under the Bush administration, while his Master’s thesis concerned the treatment of the war in Iraq by the medias.
Mr. Renard had also the chance to participate in an exchange program with the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain in 2004. During that period, he made research on Spanish Foreign policy and Euromediterranean security. He also learned Spanish as his fourth language. The three others being French (mother tongue), Dutch and English.
