Project Team
Dr. Bidzina Lebanidze
Project Leader and Principal Investigator
Dr. Bidzina Lebanidze is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavic Studies and Caucasus Studies. His research interests include EU Foreign and Security Policy, International Relations and Global Governance.
Prof. Dr. Diana Forker
Project Leader and Principal Investigator
Research areas of Prof. Dr. Diana Forker include East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) and West Caucasian languages, grammatical description and functional linguistics sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology as well as language typology and areal linguistics.
Email: diana.forker@uni-jena.de
Dr. Tiffany G. Williams
Postdoctoral Researcher
Tiffany G. Williams is a postdoctoral researcher in the “Resilience in the South Caucasus: prospects and challenges of a new EU foreign policy concept” project. Her postdoctoral work focuses on resilience in EU-funded public administration support initiatives implemented in the South Caucasus. She earned her PhD at Universität Wien while a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the Institut für Höhere Studien, and earned a Master of Public Administration at Cornell University.
Email: tiffany.williams@uni-jena.de
Veronika Pfeilschifter
Doctoral Researcher
Veronika Pfeilschifter is a doctoral candidate and research associate at the Institute for Caucasus Studies and focuses on the research cluster societal resilience. Her PhD project, preliminary entitled ‘Ideology, utopia and decolonial resilience - The new post-Soviet left in the South Caucasus’ explores the intersection between youth groups, leftist political ideologies and resilience in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Veronika holds a Master’s degree from the IMCEERES (Central, Eastern European, Russian & Eurasian studies) graduate program at University of Glasgow, University of Tartu and Ilia State University (2018-2021). She is a political scientist and ethnologist by training.
Email: v.pfeilschifter@uni-jena.de
Irena Gonashvili
Doctoral Researcher
Irena Gonashvili holds the Master’s degree in Political Sciences from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and the Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.
Ms. Gonashvili is the doctoral researcher in the project and intends to research the Europeanization of environmental and climate change policies in Georgia and Armenia.
Email: irena.gonashvili@uni-jena.de
Nikita Divekar
Student Assistant
Nikita Divekar is currently pursuing her Bachelors in Political Science with a specialization in comparative politics and international relations. In the future she hopes to be a part of humanitarian and stabilization missions and have the opportunity to work in crisis zones.
Email: nikita.divekar@uni-jena.de
Ana Maria Gutierrez Suarez
Student Assistant
Ana Maria Gutierrez Suarez holds a bachelor in International Relations as well as a B.A in Political Science and Government from Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. She is currently pursuing her Masters degree in International Organizations and Crisis Management at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. Her areas of interest revolve around Humanitarian Affairs and Human Security.