My secondment at St. Petersburg State University – a life-changing experience

As I’ve been working on Russian foreign policy for more than four years now, previously as a think-tanker in Brussels and currently as a PRIMO fellow, I was very much looking forward to the secondment at SPbU, in order to conduct research and interviews for my thesis, and enhance my understanding of Russian politics, language, and culture at large. Now, upon completion of the secondment, I can safely say that it did not disappoint my expectations: it has indeed been one of the most exciting experiences I have had so far within the framework of the PRIMO project, and even in my life more generally.

My secondment’s main goal was to carry out fieldwork for my thesis, which looks at Russia’s soft power, with a focus on Armenia. Thanks to the extensive network of my SPbU supervisors, Professor Sergei Sutyrin and Associate Professor Alexandra Koval, I had the opportunity to interview not only well-known academics and experts in Russian foreign policy, but also policymakers, high-level civil servants, civil society leaders and members of the Armenian diaspora. Such a rich and diverse target group provided me with very valuable insights, and the interviews will be highly beneficial in terms of the results of my research. The incredibly rich and up-to-date database at SPbU allowed me to access a great number of both Russian and international sources that would have been difficult to consult otherwise.

I also attended several conferences and seminars given by Russian and international scholars. Examples include an international round table on “Eurasian integration in new geopolitical conditions”, and the international conference “Studying EU-Russian Relations: Research Agenda in Russia and in the West”, both based at SPbU’s International Relations Faculty, as well as the International Summer School in Russian Business, organized by the SPbU´s World Economy Department. I also attended the SPbU’s Third International Conference on “Sustainable Development: Society and Economy”, hold by the Faculty of Economics, where I was given the opportunity to present and obtain feedback for my research. On 21 May 2016, it was organized a PRIMO outreach activity and I made a presentation about the project and my research together with Jovid Z. Ikromov, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic Research under the President of Tajikistan. Participants from business and academia engaged in a vivid debate after both presentations. To sum it up, the secondment at SPbU was really a life-changing experience for me.