Lia Tsuladze is Associate Professor of Sociology at Tbilisi State University and Executive Director of Center for Social Sciences (CSS), Georgia. Her research interests involve Georgia’s Europeanization/de-Europeanization, issues related to national identity and nationalism, informal governance and civic activism. Lia has extensive experience in leading national and international research projects supported by Georgia’s National Science Foundation, Academic Swiss Caucasus Net, Volkswagen Foundation, Open Society Institute, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet and the Horizon RIA and MSCA frameworks. Her recent publications deal with political, media and popular discourses on Europeanization in Georgia, Europeanization as a subject of political and media polarization, instrumentalization of illiberal discourses, the rise of political activism in response to the growing authoritarian trends in Georgia, etc. More details can be found on her ResearchGate profile.

Nino Abzianidze is an Associate Professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Social Sciences (CSS) and the Policy and Management Consulting Group (PMCG). Nino holds a PhD in political science from the University of Zurich. At various times, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen and the Central European University in Budapest. She has also conducted research at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds (UK). Nino has worked on the issues of political communication in ethnically divided societies and has conducted media studies in the contexts of democratization, European integration, nationalism and civil conflicts. Beyond the ProTest project, currently, Nino is also involved in another Horizon project InvigoratEU (through PMCG), where she co-leads the WP on social cohesion analysis in the EU accession states. Her latest (co-authored) article published in the Journal of European Integration looks at “how Georgia “got lost” on its way to European integration?” More information about Nino’s research interests and publications as well as her projects can be found on her ResearchGate profile.

Irine Osepashvili is a research fellow at the Center for Social Sciences (CSS) in Tbilisi, Georgia. As part of the CSS research team, she has been involved in several research projects studying the discourses on Europeanization in Georgia since 2014. The latest research project, “Mediatized EU: Mediatized Discourses on Europeanization and their Representations in Public Perceptions,” was funded in the scope of Horizon 2020 RIA Framework. Irine has recently obtained a PhD degree in Sociology from the University of Kent, UK. Relying on Bourdieusian conceptualization of power as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, the dissertation looked at civil society in Georgia and problematized the NGO-population mismatch by contextualizing it in global and local hierarchical processes. Irine’s research interests are currently located at the intersection of political and cultural sociology, with a focus on the relationship between civil society, Europeanisation, inequalities, and emotions. 

Lela Javakhishvili is a researcher at the Center for Social Sciences in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has been collaborating with CSS since November 2018. Currently, she is a PhD student at Tbilisi State University (TSU). She earned both her Bachelor's and Master’s degrees in Sociology with honors from TSU. As a young professional, she possesses practical skills in data analysis, training, research, and project management, supported by nine years of experience in research projects. Her expertise spans various fields, including experimental design, media monitoring, gender studies, and research on Europeanization. She has been actively applying both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. More information about her career experience can be found on Linkdin.