Helfried Carl is a partner in the Innovation in Politics Institute and Founder of the European Capital of Democracy initiative.
Currently on leave from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served from 2014 to 2019 as Austria’s Ambassador to the Slovak Republic. From 2008 to 2014 he worked as the Chief of Cabinet and Foreign Policy Advisor for the President of Austria’s Parliament. Before, he served as an exchange officer at the British Foreign Office in London and at the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations in New York. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. He is a board member of the Austrian Society for European Politics (ÖGfE) and president of the Honorary Committee of the Friends of Bruno Walter Music Days (ongoing). In 2019, he was awarded the Medal of the President of the Slovak Republic.
During his time in Bratislava, he was particularly active in the field of cultural diplomacy. To mark 25 years of bilateral relations, a virtual artwork was projected on the square between the Slovak Presidential Palace and the Austrian Embassy. In an allusion to the old Vienna-Bratislava Tram, a regular commuter train set was transformed into a cultural space in the T.R.A.M. project in cooperation with Austrian and Slovak State Railways, running for 8 months.
