Mihaela Papa

Mihaela Papa is Director of Research and Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, where she leads the BRICS Lab. An expert in negotiation strategy and coalition-building, she has spent more than two decades teaching, publishing, and consulting on geopolitics and sustainability. Dr. Papa was previously a senior fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where she co-founded and led the Rising Power Alliances project, and taught global governance and sustainable development at Tufts, Brandeis, Fudan, and other universities. She has published extensively on BRICS, including its evolution as a soft-balancing coalition in International Affairs (2025), the BRICS Convergence Index in the European Journal of International Relations (2023), and the bloc’s potential to reshape global finance in Cambridge Elements (2022). Her commentary has been featured by Bloomberg, the BBC, News24, the South China Morning Post, and other major outlets. She began her career as a trade economist at the Croatian Foreign Ministry and later completed a PhD in international relations at Tufts University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Law School.