Project Team
Lebanidze Bidzina
Image: Lebanidze BidzinaDr. 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.
Diana Forker
Image: Diana ForkerProf. 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
Tiffany Williams
Image: Tiffany WilliamsDr. 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
Image: Veronika PfeilschifterVeronika 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
Image: Jens Meyer (University of Jena)Irena Gonashvili-Münch
Doctoral Researcher
Irena Gonashvili-Münch 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-Münch 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
Image: Nikita DivekarNikita 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
Image: Ana Maria Gutierrez SuarezAna 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.