Bachelor of Arts (BA) · Central European University
Denisa Cepoiu is an MA candidate in International Relations (IR) at Central European University in Vienna and a cum laude IR graduate from Leiden University. Her work centres on security issues through either a constructivist or a critical realist lens. She has researched wartime propaganda, the security crisis in the DRC, and narratives around anti-corruption protests in Romania. Her current research focus is on populism, political violence, and Russian foreign policy.
A doctrine before a strategy: Building the preconditions of European grand strategic reasoning The European Union confronts acute geopolitical pressure with strategic documents whose vocabulary outruns their substance. I argue that the EU’s three strategic documents — the 2003 European Security S…
Main question: How have international legal norms adapted to the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs), and with what consequences for accountability? Argument: States have responded to PMSCs primarily through soft-law mechanisms that normalise private force while avoiding bindi…
1. What cyber capability gaps does the EU grapple with? 2. The EU lacks operational coherence, offensive capabilities, and personnel infrastructure to combat complex cyberthreats. Institutional fragmentation, national sovereignty concerns, and an overreliance on civilian regulation hinder cyberse…
1. Was the Rwanda-DRC ceasefire agreement effective in ending humanitarian struggles in the eastern DRC? 2. The ceasefire was not effective since it did not include non-state militias which are actively present in the region and are pursuing violence against civilians. 3. Civilians continue to di…
