LefteastLela Rekhviashvili is a post-doctoral researcher at Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig. Her research interests include the political economy of transition, informal economic practices, social movements, everyday resistance, and urban mobility. Her academic publications discuss post-soviet shared taxies in a comparative perspective with ride-sharing and informal transport, the role of everyday resistance in production of public space, and the impact of institutional change, particularly of marketization policies on informal economic practices.
I am no expert of Chinese infrastructure investments in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. I have only been systematically going through existing research on the topic lately to find, much to my disappointment, that most of academic discourse on the topic (let alone media and political narratives) is devoid of critical approaches (exceptions apply, see: Gambino, […]
“Georgians to the Rescue in Ukraine” “Georgians play key roles in pushing Ukraine’s reforms” “Ukraine’s New Cabinet Lineup Offers Broad Competence for Reforms” – these are just a few of the headlines telling us that Georgia’s post-revolutionary reformers have come to Ukraine to help out with reforms and that commentators are very optimistic about the […]
The conservative and sometimes reactionary tendencies of the Orthodox Church in post-socialist countries are not news, but recently the Georgian church has gone so far as to target civil society actors doing charity work. As the cold winter approaches, civil society actors, particularly a group of independent feminists held a small rally a month ago […]