Ivana Karásková is a founder and project leader of MapInfluenCE, an international project mapping China’s influence in Central Europe, and of China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE), a platform gathering China researchers to analyze and critically dissect Beijing’s 17+1 format and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Ivana is also a Research Fellow at the Association for International Affairs (AMO), a Prague-based foreign policy Think-tank. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Charles University in Prague and lectures in China’s foreign policy at the university. Ivana was a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University and is a member of the China expert pool at Hybrid CoE, Helsinki.