Dr. Ekaterine Pirtskhalava is an associate professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) and head of the Institute of Social Psychology. Ekaterine is currently residing in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Rutgers University, New Jersey where her broader research focuses on identity, specifically how Georgians maintain their cultural identity while living abroad. She also co-leads the MA program in the psychology of influence and communication. Since 1997, she has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at TSU, while actively engaging in research on social psychology, migration, family relationships, gender issues, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the identity of deported communities, particularly Muslim Meskhetians.
From 2003 to 2021, she collaborated as a researcher with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), contributing to various research projects. Dr. Pirtskhalava serves as chair of the ethics committee at TSU's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. She has been awarded multiple research fellowships, including the Carnegie Fellowship, Marie Curie Fellowship, Erasmus Mundus, DAAD, and the UASP research management and leadership program (USA). She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.
