Giorgio Comai ita eng bhs

Giorgio Comai - Senior researcher and data cruncher

PhD at Dublin City University, MA in East European Studies and degree in Political Science from the University of Bologna. He is an expert on post-Soviet affairs, with research focusing in particular on de facto states and on different approaches for the bulk extraction and analysis of textual contents form the web in this context. He is the author of a text-mining package for the R programming language. He is member of the board of directors of Asiac, Italy’s academic association for the study of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Exchange student at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, and Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, Russia; he has been visiting regularly Russia and other post-Soviet countries since 2000. He speaks fluently Russian and Romanian. 


Articles by Giorgio Comai

The upcoming presidential election in Transnistria

01/12/2016 -  Giorgio Comai

Presidential elections in Transnistria are scheduled for 11 December 2016. With substantial overlapping in the programmes of the two main contenders, the decisive factor are pro-Russian credentials

When things do not go as they should

07/04/2015 -  Giorgio Comai

A researcher of ours – now at the University of Dublin – tells about two times when OBC made a difference

The missing page in the Association Agreements

24/06/2014 -  Giorgio ComaiMirela Oprea

It might be one page, one paragraph, or just two lines. But the importance of including child protection in EU’s Association Agreements cannot be overestimated

The Vilnius puzzler

05/12/2013 -  Giorgio Comai

The Association Agreements initialled by Moldova and Georgia in Vilnius are not identical. There may be very good reasons for the differences, but some are more difficult to explain than other

Romania, the importance of the after-school programs

03/10/2013 -  Giorgio Comai Bucharest, Drăxeni

Despite the declarations of Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the after-school service in Romania still lacks adequate support from the State. Our report

Moscow's approach towards de facto states after Kosovo's recognition

08/08/2013 -  Giorgio Comai

Kosovo's declaration of independence in February 2008 marked a change in Russia's approach towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the months preceding the war in Georgia in August 2008. Five years later, a short journey through this change in Moscow's official rhetoric

ICG's report on Abkhazia, some notes on the footnotes

18/04/2013 -  Giorgio Comai

ICG's latest report on Abkhazia is timely and its recommendations show the way forward. As usual, it provides a wealth of information and details. Yet, it is not without imprecisions

Aliyev father and son, different looks at the conflict

29/03/2013 -  Giorgio Comai

In recent months, a number of incidents have taken tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan to very high levels. On the Azeri side, the rhetoric is more and more explicitly anti-Armenian and warlike, as clearly exemplified by the Safarov case and the story of writer Akram Aylisli. Yet, things have not always been such.

In Abkhazia, worried about the language law

06/11/2012 -  Giorgio Comai

The law "On the state language", approved by the authorities in Sukhumi in 2007, risks exacerbating inter-ethnic relations in Abkhazia, a territory that remains largely multi-ethnic, even after the ethnic cleansing that happened during the war. Our correspondent went to Abkhazia to find out more about it. A feature story

Aleksey Gogua, a writer in Sukhumi

03/04/2012 -  Giorgio Comai Sukhumi

Aleksey Gogua is one of the most notable Abkhaz-language writers of the twenty-first century. During the Soviet era, his novels were translated into Russian and hundreds of thousands of copies were printed. Literature in Abkhazia today, relations with Russia, the situation of the Abkhaz language. An interview