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Giorgi Maisuradze

Giorgi Maisuradze studied history, archeology, philosophy, and cultural sciences in Tbilisi (Tbilisi State University), Saarbrucken (Saarland University) and Berlin (Humboldt University). He earned his PhD at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2009. Between 2008 and 2013, Giorgi was a research fellow at the Berlin Centre for Literature and Culture. Since 2014, Giorgi is a Professor at Ilia State University and the director of the Institute for Social and Cultural Research. His interests include political theology (both in its historical and theoretical sense), nationalism and empire, Soviet and post-Soviet culture, language, and ideology.

სხვა ენა, თბილისი 2019 (მეორე, შესწორებული გამოცემა – 2021)

“Sonniges Georgien”. Figuration des Nationalen im Sowjetimperium, Berlin 2015 (თანაავტორი: Franziska Thun-Hohenstein).

Genese und Genealogie, Berlin 2013.

მართლმადიდებლური ეთიკა და არათავისუფლების სული, თბილისი 2013.

დაკარგული კონტექსტები, თბილისი 2012.

ჩაკეტილი საზოგადოება და მისი დარაჯები, თბილისი 2011.

ედიცია:

Документы по истории Абхазии 1917-1931, Тбилиси 2021 (თანარედაქტორები: გია ანჩაბაძე, მარინა ფაღავა).

Kulturheros. Genealogiern, Konstellationen, Praktiken (თანარედაქტორები: Zaal Andronikashvili, Matthias Schwartz, Franziska Thun-Hohenstein), Berlin 2017.

ფაშიზმის თეორიები (ელენე ლადარიასა და ლუკა ნახუცრიშვილთან ერთად), თბილისი 2015.

Luka Nakhutsrishvili

Luka Nakhutsrishvili earned his PhD in comparative literature at the University of Perpignan and the University of Tübingen in 2013. Since then, Luka has been teaching at Ilia State University and is currently a member and research coordinator at the Institute for Social and Cultural Research. Between 2015 and 2017 Luka was an invited post-doctoral researcher supported by the Humboldt Foundation stipend at the Berlin Centre for Literature and Culture. In 2019-2020 Luka was a recipient of the Ivane Javakhishvili Scholarship for Young Scholars in the Humanities from the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation. In 2020 he was an invited lecturer at the Goethe University Frankfurt. In 2021-22 he was a Fulbright scholar at New York University’s Department of Anthropology. In 2023 Luka will be a visiting researcher and a recipient of the Gerda Henkel Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia. At Ilia State University, Luka teaches critical theory and conducts research at the intersection of the humanities. Combining cultural studies, anthropology, historiography, literary studies and political philosophy, Luka ethnographically explores historical projects of modernization and the opposition they sparked in Georgia spanning pre- and post-Soviet periods. Over the last few years, Luka has been leading an interdisciplinary research effort focused on the Georgian Democratic Republic (1918-1921).

საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკა (1918-1921). ფორმისა და შინაარსის ძიებაში, (მზადებაშია)

Georgien neu buchstabiert. Politik und Kultur eines Landes auf dem Weg nach Europa (თანაგამომცემელი: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung), Bielefeld, transcript, 2018

შარლ ბოდლერი, რიხარდ ვაგნერი და “ტანჰოიზერი“ პარიზში, თარგმანი ფრანგულიდან და შესავალი ესე “ხელოვანი ბოდლერისა და ვაგნერის ეპოქაში და “ტანჰოიზერის“ სკანდალი პარიზის ოპერაში“, ბაკურ სულაკაურის გამომცემლობა, 2016

ფაშიზმის თეორიები. დოქტრინა და კრიტიკა (თანაგამომცემლები: ელენე ლადარია და გიორგი მაისურაძე), ილიას სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტი, თბილისი, 2015

“Peasant oaths, furious icons and the quest for agency. Tracing subaltern politics in Tsarist Georgia on the eve of the 1905 Revolution. Part I: The prose of the intelligentsia and its peasant symptoms”, Part II: Agents and items of (counter)insurgent political theology on the imperial borderland” in: Theoretical Practice/Praktyka Teoretyczna vol. 39/1, special issue: Subversive Concepts in Revolutionary Times, 2021, 15-72

„The promising ruins of the German prima donna. Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient and German musical discourse in the nineteenth century”, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, “Geschichte und Repräsentation“, Göttingen, Wallstein, 2018, 33-71

„Richard Wagner als Kulturheros. Metonymien und Inflationen einer brüchigen Identität“ in: Z. Andronikashvili, G. Maisuradze, F. Thun-Hohenstein, M. Schwartz (eds.), Der Kulturheros. Genealogien. Konstellationen. Praktiken, Kadmos, Berlin, 2017, 282-308

„Corps propre et corps technique(s) – Jean-Luc Nancy et la phénoménologie“ Studia Phaenomenologica, „Possibilities of Embodiment“, Romanian Society for Phenomenology & Humanitas, XII/2012, 157-180

Ia Eradze

Ia Eradze holds a PhD in social and economic sciences. Ia is currently a post-doctoral researcher, working on “Legacies of Communism” – an interdisciplinary project initiated by the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam. Her research investigates the political economy and the evolution of the Georgian financial industry in the 1990s. Ia’s PhD thesis – “Unravelling Dollarization Persistence: The Case of Georgia“ – explores dollarization in Georgia as an example of foreign currency hegemony and will soon be published by Routledge. Ia holds a bachelor’s degree from Tbilisi State University and a master’s degree in global political economy from the University of Kassel. Ia has been an exchange student at the University of Tartu. She is an adjunct professor at the Berlin School of Economics and Law and Tbilisi State University. Ia has also taught at the University of Kassel and at Ilia State University. In the fall of 2022, Ia will be a visiting scholar at the Davis Center at Harvard University.

Unravelling Dollarization Persistence: the case of Georgia (2022), Routledge, London.

“Taming Dollarization Hysteresis: evidence from post-socialist states” (2022) in: Ch. Scherrer, J. Wullweber, A. Garcia (Eds), Handbook on Critical Political Economy and Public Policy, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham.

“Financialization of Monetary Policy in a Dollarized Economy: the case of Georgia” (2022), Cambridge Journal of Economics, https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beac019

“სახელმწიფო ბანკის პოლიტიკური ეკონომია” (მზადებაშია) in: L. Nakhutsrishvili (Ed.) საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკა (1918-1921): ფორმისა და შინაარსის ძიებაში. Ilia State University Press, Tbilisi.

“სამთო-მოპოვებითი ინდუსტრიის სოციო-ეკოლოგიური კრიზისები სახელმწიფოს მშენებლობის და განვითარების ნარატივების ჭრილში” (2020) [Socio-ecological crises of the extractive industry in the prism of state building and development narratives] in: T. Qeburia, K. Eristavi (Eds) [Extractivist Intersections: politics, ecology, and social justice], EMC, HBS South Caucasus, Tbilisi, 146-171.

I.L.A. Kollektiv (2017) Auf Kosten Anderer? Wie die Imperiale Lebensweise ein gutes Leben für Alle verhindert. [At the expenses of others? How the imperial mode of living prevents a good life for all]. Oekom. München.

Elene Ladaria

Elene Ladaria received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès in 2018. Prior to earning her doctoral degree, Elene received a Master’s Degree from the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, Charles University in Prague and the Ruhr University Bochum, studying German idealism and contemporary French philosophy. Elene’s past and current research interests include structuralism and systems theory as they interact with philosophy either as their successors or as their challengers. Elene’s doctoral dissertation was also devoted to studying an alternative philosophical project – this one from Soviet intellectual history. It explored the work of Konstantine Megrelidze – the author of a 1930s monograph on Marxist sociology. In her work as part of the Imperial Paradigms core research area at the ISCR, Elene continues to engage Soviet intellectual history and is currently preparing for publication a 1980s monograph by the Soviet Georgian linguist Mikheil Chkhaidze about the theory of language of his teacher – Nikolay Marr. At Ilia State University, Elene teaches traditional courses focused on the history of philosophy and metaphysics (Aristotle, Spinoza, dialectics, post-dialectical concepts of resistance) as part of the philosophy curriculum at the School of Arts and Sciences.

“Nikolay Marr’s Theory of Language and Konstantin Megrelidze’s Historical Science of Thought” in Stalin Era Intellectuals. Culture and Stalinism. Vesa Oittinen, Elina Viljanen (ed.), Routledge, 2023.

“Human Rights: Pluralizing the Universality” in Menschenrechte und Menschenwürde im kulturellen Kontext. Deutsch-georgische Jahrbücher, Band I, Hg. Gutman, Tsopurashvili, Brill, Mentis Verlag, Münster, 2020.

« Intersubjectivité et système social » in Systèmes psychiques et systèmes sociaux, Lukas K. Sosoe (éd), Olms, Hildesheim, 2016.

« From concept to sign, and back again. The Soviet reception of psychoanalytic unconscious » in Identity Studies, Vol. 5. Ilia State University Press, Tbilisi, 2014.

Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne

Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne is a researcher at the Research Center for the History of Transformations at the University of Vienna as well as an invited researcher at the Institute for Social and Cultural Research at Ilia State University. She obtained her PhD degree in Social Anthropology from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Her PhD project was funded by the Gerda-Henkel foundation. Simultaneously Nino was an Associate Member at the Max-Planck- Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. From 2015 to 2018, she worked in the social and educational sector with refugees and migrant organizations in Wuppertal and Essen (Germany). From 2018 to 2020 she was a lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum where she taught BA and MA courses in political anthropology, anthropology of borders, citizenship and ethnographic fieldwork methods. From 2019 to 2020, Nino was a Research Fellow at University of Applied Sciences Bochum, at the Department of Community Health. In 2020, at Ruhr University Bochum she developed an award-winning learning project for MA students in cooperation with an MA student entitled: “Campus in Focus, Fieldwork after the Lockdown”. Since 2020 Nino is a member of the International Advisory Board for the PhD and MA programs in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Ilia State University. Since March 2021 she works at RECET/ University of Vienna.  In 2021 Nino was a Visiting scholar at Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) in Osnabrück/Germany and in 2022 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for German and European Studies (IGES) in Birmingham /UK. Her dissertation, which ethnographically explores the relationship between state and citizens in general as well as the role of ethnicity and minority status of a particular (partly Christian, partly Muslim) group in Azerbaijan, has recently been published as a book (Staatsbürgerschaft an der Grenze. Die georgischsprachigen Ingiloer in Aserbaidschan. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2023). In her current project “The search for the “good life” in Germany” Nino focuses on people from the former USSR in the city of Osnabrück, Germany, which will be topic of her second book. Nino has published on themes of citizenship, borders, ethnicity, migration, public and religious ceremonies.

Aivazishvili-Gehne, N. 2023. Staatsbürgerschaft an der Grenze. Die georgischsprachigen Ingiloer in Aserbaidschan. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag

Aivazishvili-Gehne, N. 2023. Hoping for Others: Entangled Emotional States of “Russian Germans” and the Multifaceted Aspects of “Successful” Migration. Zeitschrift für Migration /Journal of Migration Studies (ZFM) https://doi.org/10.48439/zmf.186

Aivazishvili-Gehne, N. 2022. „Multiple Vertrautheit“ – Plädoyer für die Einführung eines neuen Begriffs: „Russlanddeutsche“ in Deutschland. In. Paideuma. Zeitschrift für Kulturanthropologische Forschung. 68: 149–165

Aivazishvili-Gehne, N. 2022. Experiencing the Border, Encountering the States: The Ingiloy at the Azerbaijani-Georgian Borderland. In S. von Löwes and B. Eschment (eds.), Post–Soviet Borders. A Kaleidoscope of Shifting Lives and Lands. pp. 119-135. London and New York: Routledge.

Tamar Qeburia

Tamar Qeburia is a PhD. Candidate at the Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt International doctoral program at Ilia State University and the University of Göttingen, Faculty of Eastern European History. Her ongoing PhD research – In search of ordinary workers: Work and everyday life in Late Soviet Georgia (optional title) – explores the history of the Ferroalloy Factory located in the region of Imereti (West Georgia) by looking at the social, economic and material aspects of producing industrial space, generating the working class and constructing scientific knowledge of production and industrial technology. Her research and academic interests encompass Soviet and late Soviet history, labour history and everyday life history, the Caucasus and nationalism studies. She earned her Master’s degree with distinction in Social Anthropology in 2016, and in 2018-2019 she was an invited lecturer at Ilia State University. Her working experience consists of five years of policy research at the Social Justice Center (former EMC) in the fields of labour politics, extractive industries and workers’ movements in contemporary Georgia.

– Qeburia, T. (2022), Georgia’s Youth and History – A Review, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung South

Caucasus Region. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3720-7713

– Qeburia, T. (2022), Europe in the Caucasus, Caucasus in Europe: Perspectives on the

Construction of a Region, edited by Thomas Kruessmann and Andrey Makarychev,

Caucasus Survey, 10(1), 123-125. Doi: https://doi.org/10.30965/23761202-20220007

– Qeburia, T. (2021), Planning Labour: Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in

Romania, Alina-Sandra Cucu, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019, Historical Review 10, no. 2

(2021): 417–421. Doi: https://doi.org/10.38145/2021.2.417

– Qeburia, T. (2021), Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of

Soviet Empire, Erik R. Scott, Oxford University Press, 2016, Ambivalenzen 1953 – 2023,

Hypotheses. Link: https://ambivalenzen.hypotheses.org/338

 

– ქებურია თ. (2021), თეთრი ხალათი და ბეწვის ქურქი: მეტალურგ ქალთა

ცხოვრების ისტორია გვიან სოციალიზმში, კრებულიდან ‘ქალები და ისტორია:

ყოველდღიური ცხოვრების გენდერული პერსპექტივები (1970-იანი და 1980-იანი

წლები)’, ჰაინრიჰ ბიოლის ფონდის თბილისის და კიევი ოფისი, გვ: 21-40. ბმული:

https://rb.gy/cwnjyw

– ერისთავი კ., ქებურია თ. (2020), ექსტრაქტივისტული გადაკვეთები – პოლიტიკა,

ეკოლოგია და სოციალური სამართლიანობა, სტატიების კრებული, ადამიანის

უფლებების სწავლების და მონიტორინგის ცენტრი (EMC) & ჰაინრიჰ ბიოლის

ფონდი, ISBN: 978-9941-8-2905-5

– ქებურია თ. (2017), მშრომელთა კოლექტიური წინააღმდეგობის მოქმედებები

2010-2016 წლებში, წიგნიდან ‘წინააღმდეგობის პოლიტიკა: გამოცდილება და

პერსპექტივები’, ადამიანის უფლებების სწავლების და მონიტორინგის ცენტრი

(EMC), გვ: 25-146, ISBN: 978-9941-27-589-0__

Elisabed Gedevanishvili

Elisabed Gedevanishvili graduated with distinction from Master of Philosophy in Development Studies (University of Oxford). They acquired a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College (USA), where they researched (1) political elites, symbolic power, and urban development in Tbilisi, and (2) pro-democracy protests and institutional reform in 2019. At Trinity, they worked as an assistant on Garth Myer’s most recent book, Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South. As an exchange student they visited Vassar College (USA), Sorbonne University (France), and the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS; England). At the master’s level, focusing on the case study of the Namakhvani dam, they researched political economy of Environmental Reform and Sustainable Development. Elisabed’s research interest lies at the intersection of infrastructure, the Anthropocene, the State, epistemologies of resistance and prefigurative politics. They are also interested in critical theory, Marxist feminism, and decolonial and postcolonial methodologies.

Teona Rekhviashvili

Teona Rekhviashvili received her MA degree in Sociology at Ilia State University in 2022. The subject of her thesis was “The impact of crypto-mining on the social fabric of Upper Svaneti” and she analyses the recent crises generated by crypto-mining through the lens of infrastructures, social movements as well as moral and political ecologies. Teona’s research interest include post-socialist transformations, social movements and the anthropology of infrastructure.

„არაფორმალური შრომა პოსტსოციალისტურ კონტექსტში: გარდამავალი ეტაპი თუ მუდმივობა?“, https://socialjustice.org.ge/ka/products/araformaluri-shroma-postsotsialistur-kontekstshi-gardamavali-etapi-tu-mudmivoba

Giorgi Javakhishvili

Giorgi Javakhishvili is an MA student in the Program in Modern History of Georgia at Ilia State University. In 2020, he received his BA in History from Tbilisi State University. In 2019-2023, Giorgi worked at the Study Center-Library of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921), which he led between 2021 and 2023. From 2021, he also teaches history and civic education at the 6th Public School of Tbilisi. His research interests include the modern history of Georgia, the Caucasus and Russia, cultural history and theory, nationalism and collective memory.

სოციალ-დემოკრატიული ბიბლიოთეკა, ტ.2, ხარიტონ შავიშვილის მემუარები: 1. სამშობლო, ციხეები გადასახლება; 2. რუსი რევოლუციონერები ჟენევაში 1908 წელს, ავტორ-შემდგენელი, რედაქტორი და კომენტარების ავტორი, თბ. 2022

სოციალ-დემოკრატიული ბიბლიოთეკა ტ.1, სტატიების კრებული: სოციალ-დემოკრატია და ეროვნული საკითხი, ავტორ-შემდგენელი, რედაქტორი და კომენტარების ავტორი, თბ. 2022

განათლება საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკის დედაქალაქში, 1918-1921, ავტორ-შემდგენელი, თბ. 2022

აკაკი ჩხენკელის დღიური, 1918-1921, წიგნი პირველი, გამოცემის შემდგენელი, კომენტარების ავტორი, თბ. 2021

თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის მედიაქრონიკა, 1918-1921, ავტორ-შემდგენელი, თბ.2021

ილია ჭავჭავაძე: ეროვნული საკითხი და ისტორიული მეხსიერება, საქართველოს პარლამენტის ეროვნული ბიბლიოთეკის ახალგაზრდა ჰუმანიტართა I კონფერენციის მასალების კრებული, თბ. 2019

Giorgi Tsintsadze

Giorgi Tsintsadze is an alumnus of Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources (B.S ’17). He also holds an MS degree in Environmental Science and Policy from The University of Chicago. His research interests include climate change, “resource curse” and critical environmental theory. From 2020 to 2023, Giorgi worked at the Social Justice Center, focusing on environmental justice and governance of Georgia’s natural resources. His research efforts aim to shed light on environmental inequities in resource-dependent communities through combining political ecology and policy analysis.

Beka Kalandadze

Beka Kalandadze, technical assistant at the Institute for Social and Cultural Research since 2019, graduated with an MA in Philosophy from Ilia State University in 2022. At the same time, he has been working as a software developer for such various institutions, among them LEPL Information Technology Agency and LTD Stelvium.
 

Associate Members:

Tamta Khalvashi is a professor of Anthropology and the Head of the PhD Program of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Ilia State University. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from Copenhagen University (2015). She has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from Fulbright Program at New York University, Department of Anthropology (2016-2017) and Cornell University, the Society for the Humanities (2022-23). Her research interests are located in the overlap of experimental anthropology, the interdisciplinary field of affect theory, and cultural anthropology with a particular focus on postsocialist transformations, peripheral histories, marginal social identities, space and materiality. Her article Horizons of Medea: Economies and Cosmologies of Dispossession in Georgia (Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 2018) has been awarded Honorary Mention from Soyuz (Postsocialist Cultural Studies Research Network of the American Anthropological Association) in the Article Prize Annual Competition (2018). Currently, Khalvashi is finalizing two books Peripheral Shame: Affective City and Politics on the Margins of Georgia and A Sea of Transience: Politics, Poetics and Aesthetics on the Black Sea Coast (with Martin Demant Frederiksen).

Florian Mühlfried is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Ilia State University. He has been a Lecturer at the Tbilisi State University, a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, a Visiting Professor at the State University of Campinas (Brazil), and an Assistant Professor at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany). His publications include the monographs Ungovernance and Anti- Governance (2022, in German), Mistrust: A Global Perspective (2019) and Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (2014), the edited volume Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximations (2018), as well as the co-edited volumes Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus (2018) and Exploring the Edge of Empire: Soviet Era Anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia (2011). His German book about mistrust (2019) has been nominated for the Tractatus Prize and translated into Greek and Georgian. He is an editor of the journal Caucasus Survey and a member of the editorial board of the Cambridge Journal for Anthropology. His research interests include citizenship, the state, mistrust, interreligious relations, migration, rituals, and food.

Timothy K. Blauvelt is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and is also Regional Director for the South Caucasus for American Councils for International Education. He has published numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters, and is the co-editor (with Jeremy Smith) of Georgia after Stalin: Nationalism and Soviet power published by Routledge in 2016, and (with Adrian Brisku) of The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic of 1918: Federal Aspirations, Geopolitics and National Projects, published by Routledge in 2021. His monograph Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba was published by Routledge in June 2021.

Maia Barkaia is an interdisciplinary scholar. She holds a B.A. in Oriental Studies, an M.A. in Modern Indian History, and a Ph.D. in Gender Studies. These academic fields shaped her research and teaching interests, which lie in Imperial Entanglements, Modernity and Inequalities in the Caucasus and Asia between the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular interest in the History of Craft guilds and artisanal epistemologies, women’s history, borderlands histories and Georgian-Abkhazian historiography.  Barkaia is an associate professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) and teaches at Tbilisi State University. She is co-editor with Alisse Waterston of „Gender in Georgia: Feminist Perspectives on Culture, Nation and History in the South Caucasus“ (Berghahn Books: 2017, paperback 2021).  In 2016 she was a visiting fellow at the International Gender Studies Center, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford and in 2022 she recieved an ONGC fellowship at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford.