SEESOX Seminar Series

This presentation introduces findings from the European Research Council Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” directed by Dr. Maria Koinova at Warwick University (2012-2017). Why do conflict-generated diasporas mobilize in moderate and contentious ways? How do contexts aff ect such mobilizations? Koinova’s work evolving from this project challenges statist theories analysing the relationship between diasporas, home-states and host-states. The talk presents a novel conceptualization of four types of diaspora entrepreneurs based on their socio-spatial positionality, their linkages to Kosovo, Palestine, and Nagorno-Karabakh as de facto states, and a typological theory featuring causal pathways through which these diaspora entrepreneurs mobilize.

Dr. Maria Koinova is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” (2012-2017). She held academic positions at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (2001-2004), Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (2004-2005), and Center for European Studies (2011), Cornell’s Government Department (2007-2008), Dartmouth’s Dickey Center for International Understanding (2008-2009), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. (summers 2006, 2007), European University Institute (1999-2005, Ph.D.), Uppsala University (2013), and tenure-track faculty positions at the University of Amsterdam (2009-2012) and American University of Beirut (2005-2006).