SWP – German Institute for International and Security Affairs
The German Institute for International and Security Affairs of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) is an independent scientific establishment that conducts practically oriented research on the basis of which it then advises the Bundestag (the German parliament) and the federal government on foreign and security policy issues. The analyses and publications produced by SWP researchers and their participation in national and international debates on key issues help to shape opinion in their respective domains.
Dr. Sabine Fischer is a senior research fellow and head of the division Eastern Europe/Eurasia at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. She was a researcher at the EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris, at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. She has published on domestic and foreign policy in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union and EU policy towards these countries. She is the leader of the SWP ISSICEU team.
Yana Zabanova worked from 2009 to 2014 as a research analyst on the South Caucasus and Moldova at the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think tank focusing on the European neighbourhood. She holds an MA in International Relations and European Studies from the Central European University in Budapest and a Master's in Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Yana joined ISSICEU in August 2014 as part of the SWP team and she contributes to WP2 (civil society), WP3 (economic interdependencies) and WP4 (neighbourhood). In particular, she has focused on mapping relations between the South Caucasus and Turkey.
Andrea Weiss holds a degree in Social Anthropology and Political Science and an MA in Central Asian and Caucasian Studies. Andrea's interests lie mainly in political anthropology, state-making, and borders, with a focus on the Caucasus. She has done long-term fieldwork in Georgia. Andrea has been part of the ISSICEU team since January 2015. She contributes to WP2 (civil society), WP3 (economic interdependencies) and WP4 (neighbourhood). In the project she has focused on Georgian-Turkish relations.
Associate Researchers
Uwe Halbach is a freelance collaborator of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs specialized on the Caucasus. He assists the SWP team with his general expertise on the Caucasus.
Franziska Smolnik has been affiliated with the German Institute for International and Security affairs since 2009. Currently, she is part of its research division “Eastern Europe and Eurasia” as a post-doc researcher. Franziska has worked on questions of state-building, political order, and violent conflict, focusing in particular on the post-Soviet space. In the framework of her PhD thesis, she explored configurations of authority in areas affected by violent conflict. Franziska has carried out field research in different parts of the South Caucasus. Franziska assists the ISSICEU-team with her expertise on the Caucasus and contributes to the preparation of a special issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics on "Flows, scales, and order: trans-boundary processes and (re-)configurations of political space in the Caucasus".