Beka Kobakhidze

Beka Kobakhidze received his PhD degree from Ivane Javakhishvili State University in Tblisli, Georgia, in 2015. He is an Associate Professor at Ilia State University and lecturer at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA).

Kobakhidze has also lectured at the University of Georgia and the Caucasus University. In 2018-19, he was a Visiting Fellow of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. His research interests lie in the foreign policy of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) and the historical intersection between Russia and the Western Great Powers in the Caucasus and the contested regional history of the Caucasus of the 19th and 20th centuries. His ongoing research project is Paris 1919-1920: Independence of Georgia in the Political West. He was awarded a Presidential Grant for Young Scholars in 2012-2014, with an Open Society Georgia Foundation grant in 2014 and Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation grant in 2018 that enabled his extensive research in the United Kingdom, France, and elsewhere.

Simultaneously, Beka Kobakhidze has been pursuing his career in international organizations and public service: during 2009-2015 he was working for the European Union Monitoring Mission to Georgia (EUMM), from 2015 to 2019 he was a Head of Education and Professional Development Division at the Ministry of Defence of Georgia, From 2019 he is working for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM).

Scientific interests / research interests

Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921);

Contested regional history, narratives and memories of modern Caucasus;

Historic geopolitical intersections of Russia and the political West in the Caucasus.