Alumni Update: Armenia
Dr. Nelli Baba
yan is an alumna of the Global UGRAD Program who spent the 2002-2003 academic year studying political science at Bowling Green State University. She credits the exchange as the building block of her professional career and a period which also helped her forge lifelong friendships with fellow alumni. Currently, she is a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, where she studies Russia’s relations with the United States and the European Union. She is also an Associate Fellow at The Free University Berlin, Germany where she has been a senior researcher and lecturer. From 2005-2008 she worked for Core Media Support Program for Armenia implemented by IREX and funded by USAID. She has also been a visiting researcher and lecturer at the University of Tartu, ETH Zurich, and FRIDE Madrid. Her research and teaching interests include democratization/democracy promotion (by the US and the EU), transatlantic relations, post-Soviet politics, and internet politics. She has published on these issues, with recent works including “Democratic Transformation and Obstruction: EU, US, and Russia in the South Caucasus” (2015) and the co-edited volume “Democracy Promotion and the Challenges of Illiberal Regional Powers” (2015). Dr. Babayan received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Trento, Italy (2012) and her MA in Political Science from the Central European University, Hungary (2005). You can follow her work on @nellibabayan.