She studied law, history and political science at various Russian higher educational institutions (1984-1994), received a doctorate in philosophy in 1995, and was enrolled in the Faculty of Basic and Integrative Sciences of the University of Vienna. Fellow at FWF (Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Fellowship), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the Consequences of Wars. She worked at the Austrian State Archives (Commission of Historians) and the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe/Vienna (IDM). A series of lectures and seminars at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, at the Institute for the History of Eastern Europe of the University of Vienna, as well as at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Vienna.

She is currently vice-president and manager of the International Center for Eastern Europe Research (ICEUR).
Publications on Russia's foreign and security policy, Austrian and international politics, political Islam and ethno-political conflicts in the post-Soviet space.

Completed studies in law, political science, and foreign languages. Lecturer at Vienna-based teaching centers affiliated with U.S. universities. Held a chair of political science at the University of Vienna. Visiting professorships and guest lectures in various countries (Russia, Hungary, Poland, Iraq, Egypt, Cambodia). Worked in various field missions and presences of the international organization OSCE (Tbilisi, Chechnya, Belgrade). Co-founder of ICEUR-Vienna and currently its Vice President. Publications on Soviet, Russian, and East European politics in various languages.

Author of publications on Soviet, Russian, and Eastern European politics.
Able to communicate in 12 languages.

Marek Druzdzel is a Founding Partner of BayesFusion, LLC. and a professor emeritus at the School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh. He is a graduate of the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands with a M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science and in Electrical Engineering, and holds a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. His research focuses on building decision support systems that are based on sound principles of probability theory, statistics, and econometric. He has worked in the area of decision-theoretic systems for almost 40 years.

In 1995, Prof. Marek J. Druzdzel created the Decision Systems Laboratory, at the University of Pittsburgh. The research group focused on research and training in decision-analytic approaches to decision support. From the very beginning, he decided that the laboratory would be developing its own decision modeling software and it would make it available to the community. In June 2015, Marek Druzdzel and his colleague Tomek Sowinski created BayesFusion, LLC, and obtained an exclusive license for GeNIe and SMILE from the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. John Lough is a geopolitical expert with a background in Russia and Eastern Europe whose 35-year career has spanned the worlds of business, diplomacy, and research. He is an Associate Fellow of the Russia & Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (since 2009) and is a regular commentator on Russian and Ukrainian affairs. He spent three years with Highgate (2021-2024), a leading London-based strategy consulting firm, and was a partner in the company before moving to the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, a recently established think tank focused on the future of Russia.

He ran his own consultancy business for five years advising clients on political and investment risk in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries of the former Soviet Union. From 2008 to 2016, he ran the Russia/CIS practice of BGR Gabara, a public affairs consultancy. From 2003 to 2008, he was an international affairs adviser at TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil company at the time. He spent six years with NATO managing information programmes aimed at Central and Eastern Europe, including a posting to Moscow where he set up NATO’s Information Office in Russia.

He was the first Alliance official to be permanently based in Russia (1995-1998). During this time, he developed media and public affairs programmes designed to contribute to better understanding of NATO and its policies in Russian society and was NATO’s spokesman in Russia. Before joining NATO, he was a senior lecturer at the Soviet Studies (later Conflict Studies) Research Centre in the UK, writing on a wide range of defence, security, and foreign policy issues related to the former Soviet Union.

He studied German and Russian literature at Cambridge University. He is the author of Germany’s Russia Problem (Manchester University Press 2021).

Economist, sociologist, publicist
Vladislav Inozemtsev is a Russian economist and sociologist, Doctor of Economics, and professor. He is the founder and director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies. He has served as a visiting professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and at the Higher School of Economics.

He is the author of more than 15 books and hundreds of articles on issues of economic development, political transformation, and globalization. His work has been published in The Moscow Times, Vedomosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, as well as in leading international outlets.

In recent years, he has been actively commenting on international and Russian politics, participating in expert discussions in Europe and the United States.

• Director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies
• Special Advisor to the MEMRI project on Russian media studies (Washington, D.C.)
• In May 2024, together with Dmitry Nekrasov and Dmitry Gudkov, he co-founded CASE — the “European Center for Analysis and Strategies.”

Dr. Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC. He was a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar from 2014 to 2021. He holds a BA and PhD from Cambridge University in England. His latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State, was published in paperback in 2021 by Penguin (UK) Oxford University Press.

From 1986 to 1998, Anatol Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and is author of several books on these regions, including Pakistan: A Hard Country and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. His book The Baltic Revolutions: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence won the Orwell Prize for political writing and the Oxford University Press Governor’s Award. America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (updated second edition 2012) delineated the main dividing lines in US politics and political culture concerning national identity and foreign policy. He writes frequently for the media, and his articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Time, and Newsweek. In March 2023, Anatol Lieven was seriously injured in an accident while researching in Ukraine.

Arkady Mil-Man is a senior researcher and the Head of the Russia Program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel. His research interests are focused on the Post-Soviet countries and their impact and posed risks to the Middle East from a security perspective.

Mr. Mil-Man’s career began at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Senior researcher of the Soviet Union at the Center for Political Research, and he later headed a department there. He was the founder of the Israeli Embassy in Kazakhstan in 1992, the Ambassador to Azerbaijan in 1997-2000, and to Russia in 2003-2006. He also held different positions in the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After the diplomatic career, Mr. Mil-Man worked, among other positions, in the Israeli high-tech sector, managing a venture capital fund with his partners that invested in Israeli start-ups.

Doris Vogl is a sinologist, with PhD in Political Science from the University of Vienna.
Her research is focused on China and European security policy. She was a lecturer at Salzburg University, and has been teaching at her alma mater, the University of Vienna, for over 7 years.

Ms. Vogl was seconded (employed via nomination by a member state) or contracted (employed directly by the mission) for European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy missions: EUMM Georgia (2008-2010), EUPOL Afghanistan (2011-2013), EUCAP Sahel Mali (2014-2015). She was also seconded for OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Luhansk Region (2015-2017) and OSCE Office in Yerevan, Armenia (2010 – 2011). Before that, she had also studied and worked in PR in China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Southern Caucasus.

Dr. Andriy Yermolaev

Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Group Sofia (SG SOFIA).
Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Held the following positions:

• Senior Specialist, Analysis and Forecasting Unit, Information and Analytical Service of the Administration of the President of Ukraine under President Leonid Kuchma (1994–1996);
• Assistant to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Valeriy Pustovoitenko (1997–1999);
• Adviser to the Minister of Transport of Ukraine (2001–2002);
• Director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine (2010–2014).

Served as Scientific Supervisor of the team that prepared six Presidential Addresses of Ukraine; co-author of the National Security Strategy of Ukraine and the Law “On the Fundamental Principles of Domestic and Foreign Policy of Ukraine” (2010). Co-author of dozens of programs and concepts in the fields of national security, economic, energy, environmental, cultural, and social policy.
Author of strategic initiatives including “Peace Plan for Ukraine–2018” (addressing the war in Donbas, Ukraine) and “Helsinki 2.0” (a new security paradigm for the Eurasian continent), as well as the concept of human–commodity capitalism as a new stage in the development of global oligopolistic capitalism.
Current priorities: geocultural and global studies, analytical sociology, and spatial and territorial design for the development of the state and regions.

Kostiantyn Bondarenko

Ukrainian political analyst, political scientist, and public intellectual. He is the Founder and Director of the Penta Center, an independent think tank specializing in political analysis, electoral processes, and strategic consulting.
He is known for his expertise in Ukrainian domestic politics, political institutions, party systems, and elite dynamics, as well as for his commentary on regional and international political developments affecting Ukraine. Bondarenko has participated in and led numerous analytical and expert projects related to governance, political communication, and public policy.
Kostiantyn Bondarenko is the author and co-author of multiple books, analytical reports, and articles on political history, political leadership, and contemporary political processes in Ukraine. He is a frequent contributor to media discussions, expert panels, and international conferences.
Key areas of expertise:

• Political analysis and forecasting
• Ukrainian political history and institutions
• Electoral politics and political technologies
• Strategic communications and public policy analysis

Hossein Kermani is a Senior Researcher at the Political Communication Research Group at the University of Vienna.
His research focuses on social media, digital repression, computational propaganda, and political activism in restrictive political contexts, with a particular emphasis on Iran.

Kermani’s work addresses two main areas of inquiry. First, he studies the discursive power of social media and its role in reshaping the microphysics of power and transforming political and social structures. Second, he examines the strategies used to manipulate, control, and dismantle social media activism in non-democratic societies.

Methodologically, his research combines social and communication theory with computational approaches, including Social Network Analysis (SNA), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and critical discourse analysis.

Kermani is the Principal Investigator of the BeyondCBA project, funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund.
His work has been published in leading academic journals such as New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and Asian Journal of Communication.

His first book, Social Media Research in Iran (in Persian), was published in 2020. His first English-language book, Twitter Activism in Iran, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025.

He is currently working on his second monograph, The Art of Delirium: Social Media Suppression in Authoritarian Regimes, forthcoming with Springer Nature in 2027.