H.E. MARIE FONTANEL

Mrs. Marie Fontanel has been appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to the Philippines and Micronesia. She arrived in Manila on August 10, 2023.

A former student of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (known as Sciences Po) and the National School of Administration (ENA), she holds a master’s degree in public law (Panthéon-Assas) and a master’s degree in International and European law (University of Utrecht). Mrs. Fontanel served as Inspector General of Social Affairs at IGAS between 2004 and 2007, before becoming Director of the Visitors at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris from 2007 to 2009. She then held several management positions at the Alsace Regional Health Agency between 2010 and 2015 and became Deputy Director General of the Grand Est Regional Health Agency from 2016 to 2017. She then served as health and solidarity advisor to the office of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, between 2017 and 2020, before being appointed ambassador and permanent representative of France to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg from 2020 to 2023, then taking up her new position as Ambassador of France to the Philippines and in Micronesia.

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FRANCOIS XAVIER BONNET

François-Xavier BONNET is a geographer, Research Associate at the Institute for Contemporary Southeast Asia (Irasec). As a UNESCO consultant, he has worked in Cambodia, among other places, on the production of geography textbooks. He lives in the Philippines and his research focuses on the geopolitics of the Philippines: Muslim terrorism and guerrilla warfare, the peace process in Mindanao on the one hand, and maritime disputes in the South China Sea and China’s growing influence in the Philippines on the other. He has published, among others: “Geopolitics of Scarborough Shoal”, Les Notes de l’IRASEC n°14 – IRASEC’s Discussion Papers #14, 2012 https://irasec.com/Geopolitics-of-Scarborough-Shoal. This research will be updated in 2025. “Charting submarine routes in Southeast Asia”, Hérodote, n° 176, La Découverte, 1st Quarter 2020.

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DR. BENJAMIN BLANDIN

Dr. Benjamin Blandin is an expert in maritime security and a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS), the Korea Institute of Maritime Strategy (KIMS), and Stratbase. He holds MSc degrees in Business and Political Science (Geostrategy, Geopolitics), as well as a PhD in Political Science. Before his academic career, he worked as a Senior Consultant in strategy for leading firms, including Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, and Airbus Defence and Space.

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