Plenary Roundtable

Vello Pettai will serve as a moderator of the plenary roundtable. Vello is the Director of the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany. Prior to joining the ECMI in 2020, he was Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Tartu, where he worked on post-communist democratic development, ethnic politics and transitional justice. For many years he served as a Regional Manager for the Varieties of Democracy network. He is currently researching the impact of EU enlargement on national minorities. 

Ketevan Gurchiani will serve as a speaker at the plenary roundtable. Ketevan is the Professor of Anthropology and head of the Research Center for Cultural Anthropology at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. Her primary research focuses on urban anthropology, the environment, and informal resistance. Additionally, she explores themes such as migration and peace practices. 

Oleksii Kolesnykov will serve as a speaker at the plenary roundtable. Oleksii is a Research Fellow at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu. He holds a PhD in Political Science (2011) and previously worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University. Subsequently, he served as a policy analyst and later as the head of the Association for Community Self-Organization Assistance – a leading Ukrainian think tank dedicated to local governance, democracy, and civic engagement. In addition, over six years, as an expert of the EU-funded Association4U project, has assisted the Office of the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic and the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. 

Ryhor Nizhnikau will serve as a speaker at the plenary roundtable. Ryhor is a Senior Research Fellow in Russia, the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Eurasia programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He works on Russia’s and the EU’s policies towards Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, and studies the institutional transformations and political developments in these countries. He received his PhD in Political Science from Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu. Nizhnikau was a visiting fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, the OSCE Academy in Bishkek and the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University, and a visiting lecturer at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. His publications include EU-Induced Change in Post-Soviet Space: Promoting Reforms in Moldova and Ukraine (Routledge, 2019), and Russian policy towards Belarus after 2020: At a turning point? (Lexington Books, 2023), co-edited with Arkady Moshes.