Bat-Orgil (Origo) Altankhuyag is the senior policy researcher at the Defacto Institute, as well as the co-founder of the Economic Club of Ulaanbaatar. Origo, recipient of the Government of New Zealand’s Development Scholarship, attended the University of Auckland, earning a postgraduate diploma in Development Studies and a Master’s of Public Policy. In addition to research duties, he leads a class on public policy at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology.
Janargul Borkoeva is a Senior Political Assistant at the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek. In the capacity of a policy adviser, she served in foreign diplomatic missions. As part of her job, Janargul oversees the socio-political situation in the country and in the region. She holds a Master Degree from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Currently she is enrolled in the PhD programme at the Diplomatic Academy under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Ieva Briede is a Master’s student in Political Science at the University of Tartu. She holds bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Latvia. Her research focuses on intra-party democracy. Ieva’s thesis on the decision-making in political parties in Latvia received the recognition of the Rector of the University of Latvia. She spends upcoming autumn semester at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, continuing her research on intra- party democracy.
Hamazasp Danielyan is a Member of Parliament of Armenia since January 2019 and is engaged in the working group designing electoral reforms in Armenia. As a practitioner, among others, he focuses on the improvement of regulation on political parties in Armenia. Prior to public office, Danielyan worked as a consultant in the field of Democracy and Governance since 2007 contributing to the activities of number of international organisations working in Armenia (IFES, TetraTechARD, Smithsonian Institutions). Danielyan is also a PhD candidate at Yerevan State University, where he lectured on public policy analysis, democratization and comparative politics. He is member of International Political Science Association since 2014.
Petr Klapal is an internal PhD student at the Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master’s degree in Political Theory and Contemporary History, both from the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. He focuses on comparative politics, non-democratic regimes and quality of democracy. As part of his PhD studies, he is working on a dissertation titled “Quality of Democracy and Political Corruption in the Czech Republic”.
Bakhytzhan Kurmanov is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the Nazarbayev University (2017-2021). Having graduated from York University in Toronto and Australian National University in Canberra, Bakhytzhan has worked on economic and education policy issues in leading Kazakhstani think tanks. At his last assignment, he promoted the public-sector reforms such as public services optimization and functional review at the United Nations Development Programme office in Astana. His research interests include decentralization, comparative politics and new public
management reforms in the Post-Soviet Eurasia. Currently, Bakhytzhan is working on his thesis on Open Government and Citizen Engagement in Central Asian region.
Tomasz Liharewski holds a Master’s degree in International Economic and Political Relations from the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) and he completed a specialized programme in European Integration jointly organized by SciencesPO and SGH. Tomasz held notable positions such as with the Office of the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, the Office of the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, as Political Adviser to the Secretary of State for International Dialogue at the Chancellery of the Polish Prime
Minister, the international Organization for Migrations and most recently with the World Intellectual Property Organization. In addition to his native Polish, Swedish and German, Tomasz speaks English, French and Russian.
Rustam Muhamedov currently studies at the MA programme in Politics and Security at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. He holds MA in Philology from Mogilev State University in Belarus and BA in Political Science and International Relations from American University in Bulgaria. His current research interests include cybersecurity policies and strategies, national digitization strategies and development of ICT infrastructure in the region, among others. His MA thesis aims to assess the cybersecurity policy approaches of liberal and authoritarian states as a response to (cyber) terrorism.
Natia Mechitishvili is a PhD student in Caucasian Studies with a research focus on the Migration Development at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. She is an affiliated board member at the Centre for the Studies of Ethnicity and Multiculturalism. She was a research fellow at the European Center for Minority Issues. Besides, she served at the International Organization for Migration in Tbilisi and was an invited lecturer in Politics at the University of Georgia. In 2013, she joined the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna.
Salome Mukhuradze works as Senior Program Officer at the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (EECMD) and has over 10 years of experience in support of democracy, political parties, policy development, and gender equality. Salome earned LL.B. and LL.M. in Public International Law from Tbilisi State University and holds M.A. in Intercultural Conflict Management from Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences of Berlin. Additionally, she worked as a trainer and invited lecturer of public international law and law of international organizations.
Witold Olejnik is a PhD Candidate and lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and has recently finished post-graduate course in International Military Relations at War Studies Academy of Poland. In 2017, he completed his visiting research fellowship at the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SAM), where he conducted a research on new possible integrative processes among the Caspian littoral states. In 2014-2015, he was an exchange student at Khazar University of Baku. His field of interests includes regionalism, geopolitics of pipelines and
regional security environment, particularly in European Union, Caucasus and Central Asia.
Gražvyda Petrikaitė is a professional translator and interpreter with a BA in English Philology and MA in Translation and Interpreting. Besides, she runs a private company. Gražvyda worked for an international organization in the US and completed a Blue Book traineeship at the European Commission. She also worked with the delegations during the Lithuanian Presidency to the Council of the EU in 2013 and was subsequently involved in some political developments. In Jul 2019, she became a founding member of the newly established political party. Her interests are EU and global
politics, international organizations, international and diplomatic relations and security. She also likes music and arts, and life sciences.
Michael Škvrňák is a PhD student in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, and works as a data analyst in the Czech Radio. His dissertation focuses on the career paths of politicians and party switching. His research interests span from the behaviour of political elites to the use of computational methods in social science. Before his PhD studies, he completed an MA in political science at the Masaryk University in Brno.
Maxim Sorokin is a Researcher and a PhD student at the Faculty of Law, National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. His research focuses on comparative constitutional and parliamentary law. Maxim is a practicing lawyer in Russian electoral and administrative law. Besides, he is a co-author of commentary to the Russian Constitutional Court jurisprudence for the “Comitas Gentium France Russie” Law Initiative.
Ines Stasa is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on transitional justice in Albania, Republic of North Macedonia and Kosovo. Her research interest lies upon theory of democracy and practice, international relations theory, United Nations, research methods, comparative politics of Balkans and human rights. Ines holds Bachelor degree in Political Science from University of Tirana and MA in International Relations from Leeds Beckett University.
Asal Ulmasova is currently pursuing her MA degree in Politics and Security at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She is a graduate of American University of Central Asia (AUCA) with a bachelor’s degree in International and Comparative Politics. During her bachelor studies, she was an exchange student at Sciences Po Campus de Reims. Her research interests include democratization processes, Post-Soviet studies, Central Asian studies, regionalism, internal migration, public policy analysis and gender studies. She is currently working on her research titled: “Notes from Divorced
Women: A life Afterwards (the case of Tashkent)”.
Vuk Vuković has obtained a Master of Arts in political science at the Central European University. Party politics and survey methodology is his area of expertise. Vuk is currently doing an internship at Ipsos Strategic Marketing in Belgrade, Serbia. In his free time, he enjoys going to the theater.