Luka Ekhvaia has graduated MA programme in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES) at the School of Political Sciences of the University of Bologna. He worked for a year on his master's thesis at the Corvinus University of Budapest. Later he became an associate member and PhD candidate at the Graduate School Global and Area Studies (GSGAS) of the Graduate Centre Humanities and Social Sciences at the Research Academy of Leipzig University. At the same time, he was a research fellow at the Leibniz ScienceCampus 'Eastern Europe-Global Area' (EEGA). Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he proceeded to work on his doctoral dissertation at the Caucasus International University. Currently, he is a Senior Researcher at the Center for International Politics Research and Forecasting (CIPRF).
Dissertation Resume:
His doctoral dissertation "Memory Politics and Its Implementation Mechanisms in Post-Soviet Georgia" is dedicated to studying the collective memory and ways of its political instrumentalization in post-Soviet Georgia.
The work entails a historical discourse on the use of collective memory for political purposes and reveals how it was accomplished in ancient Greek and Roman cultures through the control of collective memory and consequent legitimization, re-legitimization, and de-legitimization of the ruler or political order.
The research foci of the dissertation is to study the role of collective memory in the process of identity construction and the correlation between the model of memory politics and political systems. The work examines psychological factors at the crossroads of individual and collective memory, which operate at both levels. To accomplish this task, the author applies Memory Studies and the new paradigm Relativistic-Quantum Noology as the theoretical and methodological framework.
The dissertation analyzes the unique features and bi-directional nature of memory politics in post-Soviet Georgia. On the one hand, the work reveals how the mechanisms of memory politics are developed for the self-determination of the state and positioning in the global world. On the other hand, the study analyzes how the process of rewriting history is carried out by modifying collective memory and a new identity building in order to stabilize the political system.
Memory politics was often utilized to rewrite history and create a new identity in post-Soviet Georgia; in the end, it was a mechanism for the constant re-legitimization of the ruling power and elites.
Research Interests:
Luka Ekhvaia's research focuses on various fields of Social Sciences: critical theories of international relations, memory studies, memory politics, collective memory and identity, world-systems theory, theories of structural imperialism and cyclical hegemony, political ideologies and political systems, a transformation of international political order, post-Soviet transition, a recent history of Georgia, radical leftist movements and resistance, political philosophy, history of global epidemics, artificial intelligence and its socio-economic implications.
