IGSD News

On 19 Feb 2024 Dr Aijan Sharshenova joined our SHAPEDEM project (and IGSD team) as a lead Research Fellow. Prior to this Aijan was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Dr Sharshenova holds a PhD in Politics awarded at the University of Leeds, UK. Prior to joining the OSCE Academy, Dr Sharshenova worked at the UN and UNDP country offices in the Middle East, and taught courses in International Politics and Academic Writing. Aijan’s research interests include public diplomacy, the EU and Russian policies towards Central Asia, EU policies towards the eastern neighbourhood, and international development. Recently, Dr Sharshenova published her book ‘The European Union’s Democracy Promotion in Central Asia’ available here.

Aijan replaced Dr Asya Kudlenko, who is currently on maternity leave.

On February 25, 2024, the “single voting day” for the national parliament and local councils took place in Belarus. This was likely the least free election in the history of the nation. Politically sterile, with no opposition on the ballot or in the election commissions, Lukashenka is ushering in a process that the democratic opposition calls a “special operation.”

Jakob Wollenstein

Originally published by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (reproduced with permission)

At the invitation of Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Europe, scholars, policy-makers and practitioners debate EU Democracy Promotion in this publication: "European democracy faces threats from both within and outside. To counter them, Europe needs leaders who are serious about upholding democratic values and addressing citizens' grievances'. Professor Korosteleva offered her take, as part of her work on SHAPEDEM-EU project. For more information please visit here.

SCFS Impact Lead, Dr Vangelis Pitidis, attended the 2023 Celebrating Impact ceremony Link opens in a new windowthat took place in the Royal Society representing IGSD as a member of the Waterproofing Data team. Waterproofing Data, a project that was born and largely implemented within IGSD, won the 2023 Outstanding Societal Impact Award for 2023, for the world-class and very impactful work on using citizen generated data to tackle the impact of flooding and enhnance disaster and community resilience in Brazilian marginalised communities. This is another example of the incredible impact our research at IGSD is having in improving the everyday lives of local citizens across the world!

Horizon Europe SHAPEDEM_EU project, launched in October 2022, has had its first annual in-person meeting in Krakow on 9-11 October 2023. The meeting brought together 12 institutional members of the consortium, to share and discuss knowledge co-production by different Work-Packages (WPs), and to engage with the EU officials on the developments in the EU neighbourhoods. In particular, Warwick team leading WP2 on assessing democracy promotion in the eastern neighbourhood, engaged with WP1 - the conceptual framework of the project - and discussed the progress and challenges for WP2 in undertaking fieldwork in Eastern Europe and capturing perceptions and practices of democracy on ground, covering Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus - the countries affected by war, conflict, and internal/external oppression.