Russian foreign trade tracker

About the authors

• Nicolas Boivin

  Nicolas joined Bruegel as a Research assistant in September 2024. Previously, he worked in foreign affairs as a graduate trainee at the Embassy of Switzerland in Ireland, covering the economy, bi- and multilateral trade and electoral politics.

  He earned his two master’s degrees in economics and political science at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). As an undergraduate, he studied analytic philosophy at King’s College London. His MSc dissertation at the LSE developed a game theoretic model to analyse inclusion and exclusion decisions in political groups. At UPF, his MSc project quantified the causal impact of a major childcare reform in New York on women’s labour force participation.

  Nicolas is a native English and German speaker and has a working knowledge of French

• Zsolt Darvas

  Zsolt Darvas is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and a part-time Senior Research Fellow at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He joined Bruegel in 2008 as a Visiting Fellow, and became a Research Fellow in 2009 and a Senior Fellow in 2013.

  From 2005 to 2008, he was the Research Advisor of the Argenta Financial Research Group in Budapest. Before that, he worked at the research unit of the Central Bank of Hungary (1994-2005) where he served as Deputy Head.

  Zsolt holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest where he teaches courses in Econometrics but also at other institutions since 1994. His research interests include macroeconomics, international economics, central banking and time series analysis.

  Personal website: https://www.darvas.online/

• Marie-Sophie Lappe

  Marie-Sophie joined Bruegel as a Research Assistant in September 2024. She holds a bachelor’s degree in International Economics and a master’s degree in Economics and Finance, both attained at the University of Tübingen. In her master thesis, she explored the modelling and estimation of rare disaster risk in DSGE models. Her studies focused on quantitative macroeconomics and finance.

  Before joining Bruegel, she worked at the European Central Bank in the International Policy analysis division. She worked on commodity markets, ranging from analysis on geopolitical risk in oil markets to the effects of El Niño on food commodity prices. She also has experience analysing international financial markets, where she was involved on monitoring developments in bond and equity markets.

  Marie-Sophie is a native German speaker and is fluent in English. She has a good working knowledge of Japanese.

• Luca Léry Moffat

  Luca worked at Bruegel as a research analyst until March 2025. He completed his BA Honours degree in economics and Russian studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

  Prior to joining Bruegel, Luca worked as a research intern at the Economic Policy Research Centre in Kampala, Uganda, where he studied the impact of Uganda’s oil and gas exploration on the local agricultural sector. He also worked as a research assistant with professors from McGill University and the University of Saint-Gallen towards constructing a harmonized world labour force survey. These datasets were used to study multiple issues, one example being barriers to structural change out of agriculture due to low, female bargaining power.

  Luca is a dual UK and French citizen and is an English native speaker, fluent in French and has good command of Russian.

• Catarina Martins

  Catarina worked at Bruegel as a Research analyst until July 2023. She studied her BSc in Economics at the University of Porto. She then pursued an international quantitative MSc in Economics via the QTEM Network, studying the first semester at the University of Porto, the second at HEC Montréal and the third semester at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM).

  Before joining Bruegel, Catarina worked at the European Central Bank in the Directorate General Market Operations, the department responsible for the implementation of Monetary Policy. As part of DG-M, Catarina joined the Money Market and Liquidity division, where she worked very closely with topics related to financial markets, benchmark reforms and liquidity developments. She had previously done a quantitative internship in Banco de Portugal at BPLim Microdata Research Laboratory of the Economics and Research department.

  Catarina is interested in various areas of economics and financial topics and has developed over time a fascination for data-related work. She is fluent in Portuguese and English and has a good command of Spanish and French.

• Conor McCaffrey

  Conor worked at Bruegel as a Research analyst until March 2025. He studied Philosophy, Political Science, Economics and Sociology in Trinity College Dublin for his undergraduate degree, where he specialised in Economics and studied in Tilburg University for a semester. He also holds an MA in Economics from the Vancouver School of Economics in the University of British Columbia, Canada, and his thesis considered the impact of welfare reforms on educational outcomes in the UK.

  Prior to completing his Master’s degree, Conor completed a traineeship in the European Parliament, where much of his work was focused on the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in European Democracies. He also worked as an intern in the Institute for International and European Affairs in Dublin, and held roles as both a Research Assistant and a Teaching Assistant over the course of his Master’s degree. He is particularly interested in labour and public economics.

  Conor is a native English and Irish speaker.