“Frédéric Encel translates geopolitical complexity into lucid decisions: borders, conflicts, powers — without simplifying, without yielding.”
Frédéric Encel
Frédéric Encel
Frédéric Encel is a geopolitical expert, essayist, and international speaker recognized for his ability to decipher with clarity the major upheavals of the contemporary world. He is a professor of international relations at PSB Paris School of Business and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, combining academic rigor with accessible pedagogy to aid the understanding of global power relations.
A graduate of Sciences Po Grenoble, he holds a doctorate in geopolitics from the University of Vincennes – Saint-Denis, qualified to supervise research. He was trained by Yves Lacoste at the French Institute of Geopolitics. His thesis, dedicated to Jerusalem, marks the starting point of an intellectual journey deeply rooted in the analysis of conflicts, territories, and representations.
A specialist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more broadly in the Middle East, Frédéric Encel has worked for over twenty-five years on strategic issues, international relations, the defense of secularism, and gender equality. His perspective constantly intersects geography, history, strategy, and collective psychology. As a seminar director at the French Institute of Geopolitics and a speaker at the Institute of Higher National Defense Studies (IHEDN), he also advises public and private companies engaged internationally. He is a member of the jury for the Brienne Prize for Geopolitical Literature and regularly collaborates with the journals Hérodote and Politique Internationale.
Author of numerous reference works, including "Geopolitics of the Arab Spring" (Grand Prix from the Geographical Society 2015), "My Geopolitical Dictionary," and "The 100 Words of War," Frédéric Encel strives to make geopolitics intelligible without ever oversimplifying it. A charismatic speaker, demanding educator, and committed orator, he has given hundreds of lectures in France and abroad. His ambition is constant: to help decision-makers, organizations, and citizens anticipate crises, assess risks, and better understand the complexity of the world to act more effectively.
Understanding borders: the return of fronts and the rise of walls!
- Borders have never been so visible… nor so complex. Neither totally natural nor purely artificial, they are transforming into major political, economic, and symbolic objects of the contemporary world.
- Frédéric Encel shows how borders are today instrumentalized, renegotiated, and sometimes militarized to serve contradictory geopolitical interests. Walls, gray areas, maritime borders, cyber borders: territory is constantly being redefined.
- He sheds light on the historical legacies that continue to weigh on their delineation, while analyzing their role in current migratory, commercial, or security crises.
- This conference helps to understand that borders are much more than lines on a map: they reflect political passions, collective fears, and power rivalries.
Understanding the war: why, how, and tomorrow?
- Why do we go to war? How did we practice it yesterday? What will tomorrow's conflicts look like? These are essential questions to which Frédéric Encel provides a rigorous and nuanced answer.
- He shows that war is paradoxically less frequent and less deadly than other scourges, while remaining a structuring phenomenon of international relations.
- Military strategies, technological innovations, doctrines, collective representations: war is analyzed from all its facets, without fascination or complacency.
- Facing war, explains Frédéric Encel, is an indispensable condition for better promoting peace and preventing future conflicts.
The art of war and diplomacy by example
- Through great strategists and battles in History, Frédéric Encel offers a captivating immersion into the art of strategy and decision-making.
- How did Alexander the Great defeat Darius? Why did the English infantry crush the French cavalry during the Hundred Years' War? What stratagems upset the balance of empires?
- Each example becomes a tool for understanding the universal springs of victory, failure, cunning, and anticipation.
- This conference also reveals why the greatest military theorists, from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, were fundamentally opposed to war itself.
Understand the geopolitics of Jerusalem!
- Jerusalem is much more than a city: it is a global symbol, sanctified by more than two billion believers and contested by rival nations.
- Frédéric Encel offers a rigorous geopolitical reading, intersecting Israeli territorial strategies, Palestinian diplomacy, and mystical representations.
- He sheds light on the rational logics that lie behind the most exacerbated passions and places the actors within their historical and political dynamics.
- An essential conference to grasp the extraordinary complexity of one of the most sensitive geopolitical hotspots on the planet.
Understanding geopolitics: going beyond preconceived notions!
- Often perceived as an obscure discipline, geopolitics is nevertheless an essential tool for understanding the contemporary world.
- Frédéric Encel clearly presents his key concepts: borders, sovereignty, power, representations, war, and peace.
- He debunks about twenty widely held misconceptions about globalization, conflicts, the West, Islam, Europe, or the United States.
- This lecture provides a solid framework for thinking about the world with rigor, nuance, and critical spirit.