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

Go Group Media: life as it is in the Caucasus, on film

29/03/2012 -  Giorgio Comai

The basic idea behind Go Group Media is simple: give a camera to people from all walks of life, living in isolated parts of the country, and tell them to make films about their lives or things that matter to them. The result is an amazing way to get to know the lives of people living in different parts of the Caucasus

Gendercide in the South Caucasus

14/12/2011 -  Giorgio Comai

“A boy is OK, a girl is not”. In the Southern Caucasus, male newborns outnumber females by more than 10%. Experts have no doubt that the cause lies in the practice of selective abortions, an already-known phenomenon in China and India. This clearly shows how gender inequality is still highly present in the region

Abkhazia's Armenians, multilingualism is the future

30/11/2011 -  Giorgio Comai Sukhumi

At home they speak Hamshen, a variety of western Armenian. At school, they study eastern Armenian, as spoken in Yerevan. According to Sukhumi authorities, they will need to speak Abkhaz within a few years. Most of them, though, prefer to just speak Russian. An interview with Suren Kerselian, former president of the Armenian community in Abkhazia

Young lawyers struggle in Georgia

13/10/2011 -  Giorgio Comai Tbilisi

Georgia's Young Lawyers' Association (Gyla) is one of the largest NGOs in Georgia. It provides free legal counselling to all those who need it. It is often critical of the government and demands more transparency. It struggles against the judiciary in a country where the acquittal rate in the capital, Tbilisi, stands at just 0,04 percent. An interview with Ekaterine Popkhadze, Gyla's executive director

The Sharipov case and inadequate safeguards for the right to asylum

13/07/2011 -  Giorgio Comai

Anvar Sharipov, a Russian citizen from Daghestan, has recently obtained refugee status in Italy. His story should have proceeded smoothly, but unfortunately it did not. On the contrary, the Sharipov affair shows up major shortcomings in safeguarding rights to asylum in Italy

The curious case of Anvar Sharipov

11/02/2011 -  Giorgio Comai

Anvar is a 35-year-old man. On 6 January, he was found without documents at the Venice-Mestre station and immediately transferred to the Centre for Identification and Expulsion (CIE) of Gradisca (Gorizia). A case of illegal migration like any other? Only at first sight

Mashuk 2010, a youth camp in the Caucasus

09/12/2010 -  Giorgio Comai Pjatigorsk

Last August, the youth forum “Mashuk 2010”, the first summer camp promoted by Moscow's government and solely devoted to young people from the Russian Caucasus, was held in Pyatigorsk, an old spa town in Russia’s North Caucasian Federal District. The event focused on training for cultural interaction and support to youth entrepreneurship

It's summer, read a blog

03/08/2010 -  Giorgio Comai

Blogs recounting journeys, adventures, projects and personal experiences. Curious and interesting stories written in the first person, so you feel like you're travelling around even while sitting at home. Check them out!

Seliger's many faces

19/07/2010 -  Giorgio Comai Seliger

Thousands of young people from all over the world took part in a camp organised by the Russian government. A portrait of today's Russia, a country looking for openness and international recognition, where development and innovation are strictly tied to the Putin-Medvedev governmental “tandem”. A reportage

Business entrepreneurs, not terrorists

29/06/2010 -  Giorgio Comai

The Kremlin's new regional approach to the northern Caucasus, based on competition and economic development, includes young people as key actors. The strategy blends Soviet experiences with capitalist values