Junior Fellowship

The CRRC-Georgia Junior Fellowship Program (JFP), launched in 2009, is a 5-9 month program offering extensive work experience and training to selected fellows. It is a unique opportunity for social science-oriented youth looking to gain skill sets that are largely missing in Georgia, such as the ability to analyze complex issues quickly and comprehensively, proficiency in essential computer programs (including statistical programs), and the opportunity to work with extraordinarily experienced and committed colleagues and superiors. Junior Research Fellows are required to contribute to complex research projects on issues that are important to Georgia's future, write analytical policy papers, be active team members, and work hard.

Maximilien Lambertson

Maximilien holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Politics from Georgetown University. Prior to joining CRRC, he was a Fulbright fellow in Vratsa, Bulgaria and then worked at the National Democratic Institute on its programs in Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His research interests include the effects of economic crises and austerity policies on the rise of extremist parties as well as nationalist history making by political actors in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. He speaks French, English, and German.

Inge Snip

Inge Snip has been living in and out of Georgia for the last 4,5 years, working for several NGO’s and having founded Evolutsia.net – a news and analysis website covering the political landscape of Georgia. She is currently finishing a Master’s degree in Politics and International Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden, for which she did individual research on elite configuration at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Her Master’s thesis will focus on Georgia’s current cultural elite. This research will include sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s idea’s of capital – arguing that social, cultural and symbolic capital creates power within society, not only economical capital. Inge has a LLB degree in International and European Law from the University of Groningen,...

Milena Oganesyan

Milena is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at the University of Montana-Missoula (UM), United States. She holds a Master’s degree in History from UM and a combined B.A. and M.A. in Near East History and International Relations, with minors in Turkish and Arabic from the Tbilisi Institute of Asia and Africa in the Republic of Georgia. Milena is fluent in Russian, Georgian, and Armenian. Her research interests include ethno-religious intermarriage, human rights, ethnic conflict, and international development in the South Caucasus region.

Gavin Slade

Gavin is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, UK. He holds a first degree from the University of Wales, and Masters degrees from Central European University, Budapest and the University of Oxford. He lived and worked in Russia for almost five years and first came to Georgia as an English teacher in 2002. He has spent the last three years conducting his PhD research on Georgia. His interests are criminological in focus and include: organised crime and state responses to it, penal subcultures, and prison and police reform in the post-Soviet space.

Malte Vifhues

Currently, Malte is a B.A. student in political sciences at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. He joined CRRC’s fellowship program in February 2010 as part of his undergraduate studies. Prior to that, he worked for a year on solar energy projects in Burkina Faso, in which he is still actively engaged today. Malte is involved in different social projects both at home and abroad. Amongst others, he helped to set up an educational center in rural Morocco and organized an annual music festival and a monthly parlour game club for young people in his hometown in Northern Germany. He has done internships at the Aspen Institute Germany and the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. In addition...

Jesse Tatum

Jesse Tatum holds a M.Sc. in European Studies with Translation from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, and a B.A. in International Studies from Portland State University. Previously, he was a translator for the Groupe de sociologie politique européenne at Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, France, and taught English in France and in China. His current research interests include the EU’s external relations and political trends in the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is the interview editor for the Caucasian Review of International Affairs (CRIA).

Sonya Kleshik

Sonya holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Central European University, where she wrote her thesis on language attitudes in Georgia. Previously, she worked for Human Rights Watch in New York as well as Bank Information Center in Washington, DC, on the countries of the former Soviet Union with a focus on the Caucasus and Central Asia. Sonya holds a BA from UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature as well as Russian Culture and speaks Russian and Spanish.

Robia Charles

Robia Charles is a California native who holds a B.A. from the University of California, Davis where she studied Russian and Mathematics. She has a M.A. in Eurasian an Russian Studies from the European University of St. Petersburg, Russia and a M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UC Berkeley and also currently an affiliated doctoral student at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin, Germany. Prior to joining CRRC, Robia was employed as a Graduate Student Instructor at UC Berkeley, as a community organizer in Northern California, and as a limnological researcher in both Tanzania and Siberia. Robia’s academic interests...