Zaal Andronikashvili (*1973) is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Center for Literary and Cultural Studies (ZfL) in Berlin and a professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. Trained in history and philology in Tbilisi and Saarbrücken, he received his PhD from the University of Göttingen in 2005. A literary scholar by training, his research focuses on narratology (the theory of the sujet) and on the interface between small literatures and world literature; further areas include cultural semantics, political theology, and Soviet/post-Soviet cultural history, with an emphasis on Georgia in the wider context of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. Alongside his academic work, Andronikashvili has published essays on Georgian politics and culture in German outlets such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and taz, and is a regular contributor to Germany’s public-service broadcasting.