Dr. Rafael Fernández de Castro currently serves as the director of the Department of International Relations at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He has been a professor of international studies at ITAM since 1991, as well as editor and director of Foreign Affairs en Español, the sister magazine of Foreign Affairs. He also has a column in the weekly magazine Proceso and in the newspaper Excélsior, two of the most important printed media in Mexico. Furthermore, he has taken part in important forums such as the Binational Panel on Migration, which published the U.S.-Mexico Binational Study on Migration, and the World Economic Forum (Davos-2007) as both panelist and moderator.

Dr. Fernández de Castro received his bachelor's degree in social sciences from ITAM in 1981, his master's degree in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986 and a doctorate in political science from Georgetown University in 1995. During his studies, he received a Fulbright Scholarship, the University of Texas Armand Hammer Fellowship, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Scholarship, the Georgetown University Fellowship and the Fulbright Scholarship for Brookings Institution Fellowship. He also serves as a member of Mexico's National System of Researchers (SNI).

Dr. Fernández de Castro served as a visiting fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Latin American Studies in 1997, a visiting researcher at Carleton University's Norma Patterson School of International Relations in 1996 and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1998-1999.