In August 2023, I became PeaceRep Ukraine’s Research officer. An historian of war and conflict, I have specialised on separatism and secession, contested states and unresolved territorial conflicts, and civil-military relations in intra-state wars in Southeastern and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. I currently research the effects of the war against Ukraine on Russia's constellation of client de facto states.

In January 2020, I defended my PhD entitled "Bridges over the Drina: history, modality and outcomes of the bilateral cooperation between Serbia and Republika Srpska (1995-2016)”, and co-supervised between Sciences Po Aix and the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. As an assistant lecturer at Sciences Po Aix (2019-2021), I  taught military history, history of international relations and research methodology in the MA Geostrategy, Defense and Security.

In January 2021, I joined the DeFacto research project for a two-years post-doctoral fellowship, based successively at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs and the University of York. My project dealt with the international engagement, representative networks, and diplomatic practices of Eurasian de facto states, as well as with patron-client politics in contexts of disputed territories and de facto statehood, with a special focus on Russia. 

In February 2023, I was selected as an Eisenhower Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome with a research project on “Russia’s patron politics and bids for secession in Republika Srpska”. 

I remain associated with the research centre “Contemporary violence, crises and conflicts” (Sciences Po Aix) and with the “War Losses and Casualties” (University of Oxford and Sciences Po Aix) and I am currently a member of the editorial board of the Revue Historique des Armées. 

Selected Publications

'Displays of statehood: de facto state representative networks in-between diplomacy and activism', Communist and Post-communist Affairs, forthcoming

'The semiotics of violence in Republika Srpska’s national narrative', Global Humanities, vol. 8, 2021

'A Serbian 'common spiritual space' across the Drina river: the modalities of cooperation between Serbia and Republika Srpska since 1995,' Qualestoria, 2018/2, December 2018.