Dr. Natalie Sabanadze is a senior research fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House and serves on the advisory board of the Davis Center's Program on Georgian Studies. Prior to that, she was the Cyrus Vance Visiting Professor in International Relations at Mount Holyoke College (2021-2023) and served as head of the Georgian mission to the European Union and ambassador plenipotentiary to Belgium and Luxembourg. In 2005-2013, she held several senior positions with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague, including head of the Central and South East Europe section and head of the Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia section.
Dr. Sabanadze earned her B.A. magna cum laude in international relations from Mount Holyoke College in 1997 before obtaining her master’s in international relations with distinction at the London School of Economics in 1999. She then served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi. In 2005, she completed her doctorate in politics and international relations at Oxford University, where she was a Dulverton Scholar. She has held visiting research fellowships at the European Center for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany, and at the Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao, Spain.
Dr. Sabanadze has written and lectured extensively on questions of European integration, nationalism, and globalization, contemporary Russian politics, and national minorities in international affairs. In 2009 she published Globalization and Nationalism: The Cases of Georgia and Basque Country and in 2010 co-edited a volume with Francesco Palermo titled National Minorities in Inter-State Relations. Her current research focuses on the EU in the world and the diplomacy of small states.
