Meet the Fellows

Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law & Policy at HEC Paris. Alberto’s research has been centered on how the law may be used to improve people’s lives through the adoption of power-shifting reforms countering social, health, economic, and political disparities of access within society. He’s the author of more than sixty scientific articles and a dozen books. Alberto is also a permanent visiting professor at the University of Tokyo School of Public Policy, the College of Europe and a scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law as well as fellow at The Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation. Originally from Italy, Alberto is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the College of Europe, and holds a PhD in International Law & Economics from Bocconi University.

Guillermo Beltrà leads Luminate Strategic Initiatives’ Policy team which focuses on advancing a paradigm shift in rules and standards to transform Big Tech’s business models and practices to create a democratic and rights-respecting information ecosystem. Guillermo previously led the Technology and Society team at the Open Society Foundation’s Europe and Central Asia Program, where he oversaw design and implementation of grant-making and advocacy of OSF’s technology work in Europe. Before that, Guillermo led Access Now’s global policy team and was Director of Legal and Economic Affairs at the European Consumer Organisation, leading the policy and advocacy work on digital policy.

Dr Giselle Bosse is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in EU International Relations at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on EU democracy promotion and civil society support through the Eastern Partnership, with an emphasis on the role of values in EU foreign policy. She has acquired several major research grants as principal investigator, including VENI, HESTIA and ASPASIA grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. She is work-package leader in two EU Horizon-funded projects, EMBRACE and INVIGORATE, which examine EU democracy promotion in the European neighbourhood. Bosse has published her research in many international journals and books, inter alia in the Journal of Common Market Studies, Geopolitics, Europe-Asia Studies and Cooperation and Conflict, and has contributed to several commissioned studies for EU institutions. She is co-director of the Centre for European Research in Maastricht, and visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and the Diplomatic School of Armenia (Yerevan).

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham, and was formerly the Director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. He mainly works on democracy, elections and development, including a range of topics such as election rigging, political campaigning, corruption, “fake news” and presidential rule. Professor Cheeseman is also the author or editor of more than ten books, including How to Rig an Election (2018) – selected as one of the books of the year by the Spectator magazine. In recent years, he has won the prestigious Joni Lovenduski Prize, the Celebrating Impact prize of the Economic and Social Research Council for “outstanding international impact” and the Josiah Mason Award for Academic Advancement. Professor Cheeseman’s analysis has also appeared in numerous renowned outlets and he writes a regular column for the Africa Report and the Mail&Guardian.

Zselyke Csaky is a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. Her work focuses on EU institutions, elections, rule of law and democracy. Before joining the CER, Zselyke was Policy Leader Fellow at EUI and research director at the US-based organization Freedom House, overseeing projects on governance, media, and democracy in Europe and Eurasia. Her comments and writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Politico Europe, and Foreign Policy among other. Zselyke has also dabbled in journalism as a reporter for Bloomberg, and as the founder and co-host of two podcasts.

Tinatin Tsertsvadze is the Associate Director at the Open Society Foundations. She is responsible for EU sanctions policies, and also has thematic expertise human rights, civil society space, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Prior to joining Open Society, she worked for the International Partnership for Human Rights, focusing on Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia as an Advocacy Director and Gender Adviser for five years. She worked at FRIDE, between 2010 – 2014, as Central Asia programme manager and conducted research and advocacy on EU policies towards Central Asia and the South Caucasus. She co-managed 50-member network of Brussels-based HRDN network between 2016-2019. Prior to that Tinatin worked for the European Socialist Party, assisting in the 2009 European Parliament Election campaign. She also served one year as the Brussels director for European Institutions at AEGEE. She has a master’s degree in public administration (specialising in European Studies) from the Georgian University.

Photo: Justin Jin/Panos for the Open Society Foundations.