Direction:History
Position:Full Professor
Beka Kobakhidze received his PhD degree from Ivane Javakhishvili State University in Tblisli, Georgia, in 2015. He is a Professor and Co-chair of MA Program in Modern History of Georgia at Ilia State University.
Kobakhidze has also lectured at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA), the University of Georgia and the Caucasus University. In 2022 He was a Visiting Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of the Harvard University. In 2018-19, he was a Visiting Fellow of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. His research interests lie in the foreign policy of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) and the historical intersection between Russia and the Western Great Powers in the Caucasus and the contested regional history of the Caucasus of the 19th and 20th centuries. His ongoing research project is Paris 1919-1920: Independence of Georgia in the Political West. He was awarded a Presidential Grant for Young Scholars in 2012-2014, with an Open Society Georgia Foundation grant in 2014 and Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation grant in 2018 and the Harvard Fellowship in 2022 that enabled his extensive research in the United Kingdom, United States, France, and elsewhere.
Simultaneously, Beka Kobakhidze has been pursuing his career in international organizations and public service: during 2009-2015 he was working for the European Union Monitoring Mission to Georgia (EUMM), from 2015 to 2019 he was a Head of Education and Professional Development Division at the Ministry of Defence of Georgia, during 2019-2022 he was working for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM).
Scientific interests / research interests
Geopolitics, Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921);
Contested regional history, narratives and memories of modern Caucasus;
Historic geopolitical intersections of Russia and the political West in the Caucasus.
- 2023 Stephen Jones, Beka Kobakhidze, Irakli Iremadze (ed.), History of Soviet Georgia, collected volume (forthcoming)
- 2021 Vulnerability of a Postcolonial Small State: Georgia’s International Prospects in 1918, in Burkhard Olschowsky, Tobias Weger, Piotr Juszkiewicz, and Jan Rydel (Ed.), Central and Eastern Europe after the First World War, De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2021
- 2020 Co-author of a book: The State Controller’s Office of the Democratic Republic of Georgia
- 2019 Feeble Projects and Wishes: The Caucasian and Transcaucasian Federation/Confederation in the Geopolitics of 1918-1920, Journal Caucasus Survey, Volume 8, Issue 1
- 2019 Under the Menace of the “White” Russia: The First Diplomatic Encounters between the Independent States of Georgia and Poland in 1918 and 1919, in David Kolbaia (Ed.), Polish-Georgian Historians’ Commission, Collected Works, Volume I, pp. 51-65, Institute of National Remembrance of Poland
- 2017 From International Revolution to a National State – The Case of Georgian Social Democracy (1917-1921) https://ge.boell.org/en/2017/07/31/international-revolution-national-state-case-georgian-social-democracy-1917-1921
- 2015 A book editor: Sir Oliver Wardrop 150
- 2015 Co-author of a Photo album: The Democratic Republic of Georgia
- 2013 Davit Ghambashidze: Representative of The First Georgian Democratic To His Britannic Majesty’s Government (1918-1921); Journal of Central Asian And Caucasian Studies, Volume 8, Nr. 15, pp. 151-168, Ankara
- 2011 Georgia’s ”Caucasian Role” and Russia – 1918-1921 and the Current Situation; Electronic Billingual Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Journal “Spekali”, Nr. 4
Current Courses |
Course Catalog |
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SELECTED PRESENTATIONS:
- 2019ASEEES 51st Annual Convention, San Francisco
- 2019Public workshop at the University California Los Angeles
- 2019Public lecture at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- 2018 Grigol Peradze International Conference for Georgian Studies, University of Warsaw,Poland
- 2018The First Independent Republics in the Caucasus, 1918-21: A Centennial Workshop
- 2018University of Oxford, leader of Georgian Seminar Series
- 2018Joint conference of the University of Oxford and Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation – Georgian Studies
- 2018Remembering the Democratic Republic of Georgia 100 Years on: Model for Europe?, Tbilisi, Georgia
- 2018A Centennial of Independence in the Caucasus, EHESS, Paris
- 2018Critical Historical Perspectives on the Centenary of the Short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, 22 April – 26 May 1918, Charles University, Prague
- 2018Centennial of the First Georgian Republic: Past, Present and Future of Georgia, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC
- 2018Georgian Studies Annual Conference, Saint Anthony’s College, University of Oxford
- 2018Central and Eastern Europe after the First World War, European Network of Rememberence and Solidarity, Berlin
- 2017First Conference of the Polish-Georgian Commission of Historians, National Rememberance Institute of Poland, Warsaw
- 2017The Epochal Year 1917: the Dream or Nightmare of Emancipation?, Heinrich Boell Foundation, Berlin
- 2014 An conference dedicated to 90th anniversary of 1924 uprising, Inalco, Paris
- 2011 Georgia 2011: 20 Years of Independence: the Results and the Prospects, Paris
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS:
- Harvard Davis Center Fellowship, 2022
- Russian and Eurasian Studies Fellowship, University of Oxford, 2018-2019.
- Remembering the Georgian Democratic Republic 100 Years On: A Model for Europe? International Scientific Forum Grant, Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2018.
- Research Grant for the UK National Archives, “Open Society Georgia” Foundation, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2014.
- Georgian Presidential Young Scholars’ Grant, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2012-2014.
- The Democratic Republic of Georgia, International Summer School Grant, Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, 2013.