Ivan Kašćelan completed his master’s studies within the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Programme at three universities – Charles University in Prague, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and Leiden University in Leiden, where he defended his master’s thesis “Between Compliance and Defiance: Evaluating Montenegro’s Performance in the Rule of Law and Judicial Reforms and the Struggle for Genuine Progress.” Previously, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Humanities at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), with his second year at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg as an Erasmus+ exchange student. He is a teaching associate in the course Introduction to International Relations at UDG. In addition, he has pursued further professional development in the field of human rights and freedoms, with a particular focus on the rights of vulnerable groups, as well as Montenegro’s European integration process. He also completed the Objectivism School organised by the Ayn Rand Center Europe and the EU Negotiations School organised by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE), with the support of the Ministry of European Affairs. He was a member of the Montenegrin delegation at the 36th Annual International Model NATO, organised by Howard and Converse Universities, and a participant in the Model Council of Europe Negotiations in Strasbourg, organised by the Federation for Diplomacy and the United Nations (FDNU) and the Council of Europe. He has also participated in several regional academic projects supported through the Erasmus+ programme and the Western Balkans Fund and has attended numerous seminars in Montenegro and abroad. Furthermore, he has completed CCE’s internal trainings in communications, event organisation, free access to information, and project proposal writing for public funds. He gained his first professional experience as an intern at the Parliament of Montenegro, providing administrative and research support to the work of a parliamentary committee, as well as at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) office in Montenegro, where he performed various administrative, research, and analytical tasks. Fluent in English, with knowledge also of German and Italian.