Paul Michael Graystone is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher. His work examines borderlands, exclaves and memory politics in Russia. Paul’s doctoral research focuses on Russian Borderlands in Crisis: Assessing Geopolitical Change in the Eastern Baltic 2008-2022
Viktoria Kobzeva is funded by an ESRC Midlands Graduate School DTP Studentship. She is working on a PhD project titled: Activism woven into relations, imbued with emotion: the case studies of Chechen and Azerbaijani transnational activists networks. The doctoral project is a comparative study that fills the gap in post-Soviet Area Studies, with its focus on Caucasian diasporas, activism and transnational communities. Viktoria is supervised by Cerwyn Moore and Deema Kaneff, CREES.
Annamaria Kiss is an LISS DTP ESRC-funded doctoral researcher based at King’s College London. Annamaria’s work examines high-risk transnational activism and Russian Perceptions of Transnational Armed Mobilisation. Annamaria is supervised by Samuel Greene at KCL and Cerwyn Moore at CREES, University of Birmingham.
Aleksandre Kvakhadze is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher. His research focuses on violent social movements and transnational activism, examining volunteers from the Caucasus who have participated in hostilities in Syria. He has published work on these and related issues in journals, including Perspectives on Terrorism, and Caucasus Survey, while he also has an extensive record of policy work.
Yuxiang Lin’s doctoral work seeks to explain the exception and ongoing success of the Bulgarian conservative political party GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria) over the past two decades. Based on one year’s fieldwork in Bulgaria during which time interviews were conducted with relevant political figures across the country, the study aims to address the wider issue of party politics in eastern Europe and why some parties are short lived while others endure. Yuxiang is co-supervised by Tim Haughton and Deema Kaneff, both from CREES.
Leonid Nersisyan is a Gulbenkian Foundation funded doctoral researcher. His research focuses on irregular warfare in Nagorno-Karabakh, and his general areas of research interest include defence analysis, arms control, armed conflict, foreign and military policy in Russia and the CIS region. He has published work on these and related issues in journals and an edited collection (in Russian) while he also has an extensive record of policy work.
More information: Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES)
Course information: Russian and East European Studies PhD/MPhil