On this page, you will find:

To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Russian Federation LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in the Russian Federation, visit our Russian Federation Legal Assistance page

COI Experts

Email: a.c.monaghan@gmail.com

Dr. Andrew Monaghan is Director of the Russia Research Network, Ltd, and a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome. He has been previously employed by NATO, Chatham House and the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre. He has served as an expert witness to several parliamentary committees including the UK’s National Security Strategy Committee and the House of Commons Foreign Affairs and Defence Select Committees and the NATO Parliamentary Committee. He received his PhD in Russian foreign policy (Russian perspectives of Russia-EU security relations) from the Department of War Studies, King’s College, from where he also obtained an MA in War Studies, graduating with the Simon O’Dwyer Russell prize.

Email: akc24@columbia.edu

Ann Cooper is an award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent with more than 25 years of radio and print reporting experience. She also worked eight years as executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom advocacy group, prior to joining the Columbia faculty. She was NPR’s Moscow correspondent from 1987 through 1991, including doing many stories on glasnost and the opening of press freedoms and free expression in the final years of the Soviet Union. As the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, she continued to develop expertise on Russia’s evolving atmosphere for independent media. During this role she traveled to Moscow and other Russian cities several times to do research and advocacy on behalf of press freedom. Ann recently traveled to Russia in 2014, when she was a State Department visiting speaker on press issues in Moscow, Voronezh and Vladimir. In 2015 she wrote an essay surveying the rest and press freedom in the Soviet Union and later Russia, from the Soviet era to the present: You can find it here.

Email: b.bowring@bbk.ac.uk

Prof Bowring has extensive experience in Russia dating back to 1983 when he first travelled to the country. Prof Bowring is fluent in Russian and has published over 100 books, articles and book chapters related to Russia. From 1997 to 2003, he was the contracted Adviser to the UK Department for International Development on ‘Human Rights in Russia’ and ‘Access to Justice and Rights Issues in Russia’. Prof Bowring is one of a relatively small number of Western experts in Russian law and practice, and is regularly called upon to advise UK Government departments and participate in discussion at Chatham House. He also acts as an expert for the Council of Europe, EU, OSCE and US Department of Justice. He has worked extensively on bringing cases at the European Court of Human Rights. Please see the following link for a full breakdown of Prof Bowring’s work in Russia. To learn more: Bill Bowring Experience in Russia.docx

Email: BRadeljic@nebrija.es/ branislav.radeljic@gmail.com

Branislav Radeljic is an academic, consultant, and policy analyst, specializing in EU, Balkan and East European political and socioeconomic developments. He has a BA from the University of Rome La Sapienza, two MA degrees from the Free University of Brussels, and a PhD from the University of London.

Currently, he is a professor of international relations at Necmettin Erbakan University. He also serves as a visiting professor of European politics at Antonio de Nebrija University. Previously, he lectured for many years at the University of East London. In addition, he held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Radeljic is the author of Europe and the Collapse of Yugoslavia: The Role of Non-State Actors and European Diplomacy (2012), editor of Europe and the post-Yugoslav Space (2013), Debating European Identity: Bright Ideas, Dim Prospects (2014), European Community-Yugoslav Relations: Debates and Documents that Mattered (1968–1992) (2017), and The Unwanted Europeanness: Understanding Division and Inclusion in Contemporary Europe (2021), and co-editor of Religion in the post-Yugoslav Context (2015) and Kosovo and Serbia: Contested Options and Shared Consequences (2016). He has presented his research findings at numerous conferences and workshops and has regularly been invited to give talks and commentary to different media outlets.

Outside academia, Professor Radeljic conducts research and provides consultancy services within his area of expertise. He is also a registered expert witness for asylum, refugee, and immigration cases. He covers Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Russia. His working languages are English, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Italian, Macedonian, and Russian. Professor Radeljic divides his time between Konya, London, and Madrid.

Email: danigrigsby@gmail.com

Ms. Danielle Grigsby is a Researcher and Affiliate of Forced Migration / Refugee Studies at the Feinstein International Center of Tufts University. Formerly, she has worked as a Refugee Resettlement Case Manager for the International Rescue Committee, in state policy research for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), and as a refugee resource specialist for Moscow-based NGO, Opora.  Grigsby is conversant in Russian and currently conducts research on Moscow-based Chechen IDPs, human smuggling patterns to, and through, Russia, pathways of resettlement in the former Soviet Union, Russia’s fascist gang-movement and Moscow’s Diaspora remittances and networks.  Grigsby specializes in non-CIS forced migration to Moscow and its nongovernmental refugee service delivery.

Email: egilliga@indiana.edu

Emma Gilligan is the Director of the Human Rights Institute and Associate Professor of Russian History at the University of Connecticut. She has worked on asylum cases for Russian citizens seeking asylum in the United States and as a consultant for the public defenders office. She wrote Defending Human Rights in Russia; Sergei Kovalyov Dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969-96 (Routledge, 2004). Her second book, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton University Press, 2010) examines the war crimes committed by Russian soldiers against the civilian population of Chechnya.

Email: Federica.Prina@glasgow.ac.uk

Federica Prina is a Research Associate at the School of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Glasgow. She is part of a team implementing the three years (2014-2017) research project ‘National Minority Rights and Democratic Political Community: Practices of Non-Territorial Autonomy in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Her field of research encompasses cultural, linguistic and participatory rights of national minorities in the post-Soviet space, particularly the Russian Federation, Moldova, Estonia and Ukraine. From 2011 to 2013 she was a researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), in Flensburg (Germany), where she coordinated the research cluster ‘Culture and Diversity’. From 2012 to 2014 she was the editor of the Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE) . Federica Prina has also worked for human rights organisations, including Article 19 (the Global Campaign for Free Expression), Amnesty International and Minority Rights Group.

Email: Gavin.Slade@glasgow.ac.uk

Dr. Gavin Slade is a Lecturer in Legacies of Communism at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Slade received his PhD from Oxford University in 2012. He has worked at Ilia State University, Tbilisi and the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the University of Glasgow, Dr. Slade was a Research Fellow at the Freie Universitat, Berlin. Dr. Slade is a criminologist who focuses on the countries of the former Soviet Union. His work is underpinned by an interest in the social organization of violence in these countries and has focused particularly on organized crime, policing, prison reform and the politics of crime. He has examined varying effects of prison architectural reform projects in Georgia, Lithuania and Kyrgyzstan on social relations, group formation and violence among prisoners. Dr. Slade is also currently working on collaborative projects on the political economy of punishment in the former Soviet Union, the transplantation of post-Soviet organized criminal groups in western Europe, and the policing of ‘hooliganism’ in Kazakhstan.

Email: r.turaeva@gmail.com

The Expert is a Country Expert and academic with extensive fieldwork experience and providing expert reports (100+) for more than 40 firms in the UK, US, Netherlands, and Canada with areas of expertise such as but not limited to:

  • Authentication documents originating from countries of expertise
  • Country reports on the indicated countries of expertise
  • Minority groups, religious groups
  • Political, social and cultural groups: LGBT
  • Organised crime and mafia, state crime
  • Extremist and violent groups, including religious groups
  • Human rights violations
  • Women issues: honour killing
  • Human trafficking
  • Psychiatry and prison conditions
  • Disadvantaged groups e.g. children, minorities, mentally ill, disabled, terminally ill
  • Availability of medical services
  • State structure, military and security services
  • Drug dealing and trafficking

Email: m.bader@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Dr. Max Bader is a lecturer in Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University. Before coming to Leiden University, he was a lecturer and researcher at the University of Amsterdam, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the OSCE Academy, and a visiting scholar at George Washington University and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Bader has extensive experience working in research and advocacy projects in Russia and Ukraine. He is a frequent election observer for OSCE/ODIHR in the post-Soviet area, and has carried out policy evaluations for USAID and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. His current research project, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is  Human Security and Conflict in Ukraine: Local Approaches and Transnational Dimensions.

Email: maria.popova@mcgill.ca

Maria PopovaPhD in Government (Harvard University), is Associate Professor of Political Science and Jean Monnet Chair at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She is also a the Scientific Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal and a faculty associate at the Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID) at McGill. She is the author of Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2012), the winner of the 2012-2013 American Association for Ukrainian Studies prize for best book in the fields of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature, and culture.  Her research focuses on judicial independence, the rule of law, and corruption in the post-Communist region.  She is currently working on a book manuscript on the politics of corruption prosecutions.  She also follows and writes about post-Maidan judicial reform in Ukraine.

Marilisa Lorusso, PhD on Democracy and Human Rights, MA in Russian Language and Literature, BA in Diplomacy. She has taught several courses in history, Eastern Europe, international relations, domestic and foreign politics, business, literature and culture in many universities (İstanbul Üniversitesi, Turkey; El Manar, Tunisia; American University, Armenia; Università Degli Studi di Genova, Italy). She is a permanent co-operator of Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, an Italian think tank, and writes for different centres of studies. She was deployed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the post-war European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM), where she was field office gender focal point; she was appointed as EU Council Secretariat for the post-war diplomatic discussions held in Geneva. She is a Country of Origin Expert aslo for the US Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, for the UK Electronic Immigration Network and she provided report on a wide area of expertise (climate-related issues, disability, public health and services, forced marriage, LGBTQ+ issues, domestic violence, military/police service, prison conditions, civil and political rights, gang-related violence, minority issues, refugees and IDPs, war and post-conflict response).

Her list of open-source publications is available at http://marilisalorusso.blogspot.com and https://independent.academia.edu/MLorusso.

Email: r.connolly@bham.ac.uk

Dr Richard Connolly is senior lecturer in Political Economy and co-director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research and teaching are principally concerned with the political economy of Russia. He is also visiting professor on the Master of Global Public Policy (MGPP) programme at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, member of the editorial board for Eurasian Geography and Economics, and for the Routledge series on Russian and East European Studies, and he is editor of Post-Communist Economies. Dr Connolly has presented his research to a wide range of academic and non-academic audiences, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO), and the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC). He has written extensively about the political economy of Russia, with a focus on the institutional environment and the country’s relationship with the global economy.

Email: r.mole@ucl.ac.uk

Prof. Richard Mole is Professor of Political Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. He has an MPhil from Cambridge University and a PhD from the London School of Economics, both in International Relations. He spent extended periods of time studying and working in the USSR and subsequently in Russia and the Baltic States and speaks fluent Russian. His research focuses on homosexuality and homophobia in Russia and the former USSR (especially political homophobia) and migration by LGBT individuals from Russia, the former USSR and Poland to the Germany and the UK. He has provided expert reports on asylum cases made on the basis of ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Email: tgerman.jscsc@da.mod.uk

Dr. Tracey German is a Reader in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College, London. Her research focuses on Russia’s relations with its neighbours, and conflict and security in the Caucasus and Caspian region, and she has published widely on these issues. Prior to this she lectured at RMA Sandhurst and the University of Aberdeen, and worked as a research manager for a business intelligence company, specialising in energy security. She is a graduate in Russian from the University of Edinburgh and was awarded a PhD on the topic of Russia’s conflict with Chechnya. She has expertise on the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, security in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and energy issues in the former Soviet states. She is a Russian speaker, has lived in Russia and Ukraine, and travelled extensively across the post-Soviet space.

 

Dr Victoria Donovan is a lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on Russian history and culture, with an emphasis on local identities, heritage politics, and the cultural memory of the Soviet past in twenty-first century Russia. She has spent extended periods of time living and working in Russia and serves as the Director of the Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East Europe Studies at the University of St Andrews. She has recently been selected as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker for 2016/2017, where she will be developing programmes based on her research with the BBC.

COI Resources

We have not yet identified any COI resources for the Russian Federation. If you have any suggestions, please get in touch.

Russian Federation Legal Assistance

Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in the Russian Federation.

Russian Federation LGBTQI+ Resources

Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in the Russian Federation.

We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.

Last updated August 2023