About

The Places in the Sun Team is made up of members from the Institute for a Greater Europe, working with the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum and their Europe Lab Project!

Valentin Luntumbue

Valentin M. Luntumbue is a Belgian civil servant, independent researcher, and writer. Graduated from the Natolin campus of the College of Europe after studying history, sociology and international relations, Valentin is also an EEAS alumnus and a former academic assistant at the College of Europe’s Bruges campus. An advisor within one of Belgium’s many federal entities, he also teaches African history in a Congolese diaspora school and acts as the IGE’s editor-in-chief.

Philippe Lefevre

Philippe A. Lefevre is a British and French national and Chair of the Institute for a Greater Europe. Graduating from the College of Europe in Bruges after studying international relations, he also formerly studied medieval history and international politics. He has been working with the Institute for over three years and has worked in several other youth organisations since with the Youth Association for a Greater Europe.

Stephan Raab

Stephan Raab is a contributor and editor at the Institute for Greater Europe. He holds a Master in Political Science and a Master in Adult Education/Continuous Education from the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg as a graduation from the European Academy of Diplomacy Warsaw. His interests are located in digitisation, global education, educational development and the development of democratic dialogue in civil societies.

Ruxandra Seniuc

Elena Ruxandra Seniuc read for an MSc in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford and holds a bachelor’s degree in Criminology from Durham University. She is mainly interested in transnational security threats and asymmetric threats, with an ever-growing passion for the field of strategic studies. As an avid history reader, she is eternally fascinated by her country’s multicultural inheritance and its tumultuous national-communist past.

Adrian Waters

Adrian Waters was born in Rome in 1996 and has lived and studied in both Italy and the UK. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Politics from the University of Kent (Canterbury, England), a Master of Arts in History from University College London and a second-level master’s in International Public Affairs from the LUISS Guido Carli university in Rome. In 2018–19 he worked as the secretary of the Institute for a Greater Europe, for which he continues to contribute articles on topics related to European politics. .

Nadya Kamenkovich

Nadezhda Kamenkovich holds a BA in International Relations from Moscow-based HSE and she is currently reading for MPhil in Russian and East European Studies in Oxford University. Apart from her studies, Nadya is a theme section editor for St. Antony’s International Review (STAIR), the only peer-reviewed international affairs journal in Oxford, overseeing a section that focuses on energy politics. And along with other REES students, she has launched the Perspektiva Society in Oxford, a platform for dialogue between post-Soviet and Western perspectives.

Thomas Yaw Voets
Thomas Yaw Voets is a graduate of the University of Antwerp, who holds a master’s degree in Law (with a specialisation in Sustainable Development and Global Justice) and another master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy. He is currently doing a traineeship with Member of the European Parliament Kathleen Van Brempt, and also writes for the Institute for a Greater Europe.

Nupur Patel
Nupur Patel is a third-year DPhil student at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. Following a bachelor’s degree in History and French, and a Master’s Degree in Medieval and Modern Languages, she is now pursuing her doctoral research which considers networks of collaboration and responses to modesty in the printed works of four sixteenth-century French women. Alongside her DPhil work, she plays an active role in equality and diversity initiatives within her college and the wider University.

Robin Schmahl
Robin F.C. Schmahl studied MENA studies, philosophy, political science and history in Munich, Cairo and Berlin. He received his MA at LMU Munich in Islamic and Arabic studies in 2019 with a focus on critical IR theory and human rights in the Middle East. He has worked for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the German Orient Institute in Beirut and the German Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Currently, Robin is a PhD candidate at FU, Berlin and a member of the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, he holds a research position at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in the Historicity of Democracy in the Arab and Muslim Worlds research program.

Ibrahim Sultan
Ibrahim Sultan is a graduate from Florida International University with a degree in International Relations and a regional focus on Latin America. He was born in Miami (USA) but is of Honduran and Pakistani descent. His research interests include Latin America, indigeneity, nativism, international development, and neocolonialism.

Han Asikhia
Hannah is a MA student and writer. Her work focuses on black feminism as a site for future possibilities. She is the creator of three zines all of which were made to raise money for Black-owned charities. Her work can be found in publications such as Black Ballad and RaceZine.

Jessica Gosling
Jess Gosling is a public policy professional, entrepreneur, public speaker, and PhD student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on how nation-states brand themselves through the lens of cultural diplomacy, public policy, and soft power, with a core focus on Mexico, Georgia and South Korea. She has a deep passion for how we can come together with the use of technology and digital skills, which her PhD project draws upon. Jess previously worked for the United Nations, the British Government and other civil society organisations for over seven years abroad.

Hilary Koum Njoh
Hilary Koum is an Msc International Relations graduate from the London School of Economics. Her academic research is centred at the intersection of race, gender, and political violence. In this work she seeks to advance a critical lens that draws attention to narratives and experiences typically left out of the discipline.

EastEast
Biography is in the article, “Post-Colonial Offerings for Post-Soviet Beings: Tools and Tactics for the New World”. Their website is https://easteast.world/en. In 2021, EastEast is launching an Arabic version of their platform.

David Saveliev
David Saveliev grew up between Russia and the US and graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in International Relations and Film Production. He is currently pursuing an MPhil in Russian and East European studies at the University of Oxford. His dissertation will focus on protest movements in the former USSR and their international impact; as a journalist and filmmaker David covered war and protests on the ground in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, USA, France, Hong Kong and more. David’s research interests are leftist politics, revolutionary movements, cyberspace, and paths to improving the US-Russia relations. In his free time David likes to read, travel, draw and collect obscure memes.

Jonas Lammens
Jonas Lammens was born in Ghent, Belgium and moved during infancy to East Anglia in the United Kingdom. His academic interest surrounding Nazi Europe was sparked by the epic stories of his Great Grandfather, Marcel, who experienced first-hand everyday Nazi Imperialism in Flanders. Jonas studied History and Politics (BA) at Exeter University, where he discovered postcolonial theory, before rekindling his native roots by studying International Politics (Msc) at KU Leuven. A keen and vocal activist, Jonas now lectures in modern history and politics at The Colchester Sixth Form College. Jonas frequently enjoys contributing to the Greater Institute for Europe on issues of global and regional politics, geopolitics and anything in between.

Olga Burlyuk
Dr. Olga Burlyuk is FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University (Belgium) and Visiting Lecturer at the College of Europe (Bruges campus). Olga’s research interests are situated at the intersection of EU studies (with a focus on EU external action) and East European studies (with a focus on Ukraine). Her latest work includes book projects on unintended consequences of EU external action (with Gergana Noutcheva, Routledge, 2020) and civil society in Ukraine post-Euromaidan (with Natalia Shapovalova, Columbia UP, 2019). She is currently editing a book on migrant academics’ narratives of precarity in the Global North (with Ladan Rahbari) and writing a monograph on motherhood. Olga can be contacted at: olga.burlyuk@ugent.be

Jakub Stepaniuk
Jakub Stepaniuk is a young researcher and language analyst working for Western Balkan markets. At the moment of this publication, he is graduating from the University College London marked by the delivery of his thesis on alternative identities in ethnically divided cities. So far he lived, worked and studied in Poland, England, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Austria. Jakub is a huge enthusiast of foreign languages, studies of nation and nationalism and constructivist geopolitics.

Davide Denti
Davide Denti holds a PhD in International Studies from the Università degli Studi di Trento and an advanced master from the College of Europe. He has published several book chapters and peer-reviewed articles in international journals on issues of European integration of the Western Balkans and memory politics.

Dino Huseljic
Dino Huseljic holds a MA in Italian Studies from the Università degli Studi di Pisa and a BA in Humanities and Modern Literature from the Università degli Studi di Milano. He speaks Italian and Bosnian, and writes for EastJournal.net and Gli Stati Generali.

Laura Luciani
Laura Luciani is a PhD Candidate at Ghent University (Belgium), working at the intersection of critical international relations and political sociology. Her research examines the EU’s ‘promotion’ of human rights and gender equality in the South Caucasus, with a focus on its negotiation by domestic activists and NGOs. She is also an editor with East Journal and co-author of Kiosk, two Italian media outlets focused on Eastern Europe.

Sandra Muteteri Heremans
Sandra Muteteri Heremans (°1989, Rwanda) is a Rwandan-Belgian visual artist. She received a master’s degree in Art History and later in Social and Cultural Anthropology, both at KU Leuven in Belgium.
She explored in previous work her (family) archive. This archive embodies an (abandoned) life in Rwanda and turned out to be a materialised testimony of larger political stories. This re-visiting of familial archive was incorporated in a first installation, ‘Becoming the Other’ and later in a the experimental short film ‘La Mazda Jaune et Sa Sainteté’, in which she explored the political and intimate potential through a very solid and rhythmic editing of photographs, archival material and the missing image: the black image. She is currently working on Gusubira Imuhira: tales of a Rwandan student in the USSR. She investigates through the experiences of a Rwandan student in the USSR, the geopolitical realities in the 70s and the relationship between the cold war and the African continent.

Żaneta Kubicka
Żaneta Kubicka is a Black Polish woman, born and raised in Poland, currently working as an analyst for a financial institution in Switzerland. She is a graduate of Mississippi College (Cum Laude, BS-2016), College of Europe (MA-2017) and Southeastern University (MBA-2019), and winner of the Alan Jones Award and Outstanding Student in Political Science Award. Her interests include international politics and culture. She is a huge fan of basketball and her Samoyed dog.

‘Malaika Newsome-Magadza
Malaika Newsome-Magadza is a Zimbabwean researcher with a master’s degree in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests lie primarily in Southern Africa and Palestine, with a specific focus on anti-colonial action, the intersections of race, land, and indigeneity, and the mechanisms of Western media in constructing narratives of threat in these regions.

John Alulis
John Alulis is the Research Manager for the University Consortium, an inter-regional training program for outstanding students from the US, Europe, and Russia. He completed his MPhil in Russian and East European Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford, graduating with distinction in 2018.

His thesis topic was on contemporary Lithuanian collective memory about 1940 to 1953 and the impact this has on present-day Lithuanian society. Previously, John served as a cavalry officer in the US Army’s 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), achieving the rank of captain. During his time with the Army, John deployed to Afghanistan and participated in a variety of exercises and NATO missions in Germany, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Georgia, among other countries.