Staff
Professor Stephen Jones is the director of the Program on Georgian Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His books include Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917 (Harvard University, 2005), and Georgia: A Political History Since Independence (I.B. Tauris, 2012). More recently he edited with Neil MacFarlane Georgia from Autocracy to Democracy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). Professor Jones became a foreign member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences in 2011 and received an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University in 2012 and from Ilia State University in 2018.
Allison Hart is the program coordinator for the Program on Georgian Studies. Prior to joining the Davis Center, she received her M.A. in political science from the American University in Cairo, where her thesis focused on regional security in the Black Sea region. In 2022 she spent two months researching legacies of the Rose Revolution while working as a Black Sea Title VIII fellow.
Nini Sikharulidze is a research assistant for the Program on Georgian Studies. She graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School as a biological sciences major. She is originally from Tbilisi, Georgia. As a member of the Harvard graduating class of 2025, Nini is exploring human developmental and regenerative biology with a secondary focus on global health and health policy. Her current interests include medicine, education, and healthcare strategies in developing nations.
Mzia Shanava is a Georgian language instructor. She is a linguist, journalist, and educator. She studied Georgian language and classical humanities at Ivane Javakhishvili University in Tbilisi, Georgia. After immigrating to the U.S., she worked as a Georgian translator for the Department of Justice and as a Georgian instructor for the Department of Defense, where she taught Georgian to the diplomatic corps and developed a course on modern Georgian language.
Fellows
Beka Kobakhidze
Ia Eradze
Advisory Board
Dr. Neil MacFarlane joined Oxford University as the Lester B. Pearson Professor of International Relations in 2006. He has a wide range of research interests, which focus on the theory and practice of international relations of the former Soviet space, as well as Georgian regional foreign policy
Zaza Pachulia was a professional player in the NBA for over 16 years, and a member of the Golden Warriors’ 2017 and 2018 NBA Championship teams. Currently, a consultant with the Golden Warriors, and founder and leader of the Zaza Pachulia Basketball Academy in Georgia.
Ambassador Natalie Sabanadze is currently the Cyrus Vance visiting professor in International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. Previously she held positions as Georgia’s ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union as well as a Senior Adviser/Head of Section at the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.
Simon Sidamon-Eristoff leads the tax-exempt organizations practice at Kalbian Hagerty, LLP, a Washington, DC, law firm. He chairs the board of American Friends of Georgia, a nonprofit provider of humanitarian aid to the Republic of Georgia
Dr. Mamuka Tsereteli has more than thirty years of experience in academia, diplomacy and business in the Black Sea and Caspian regions. He is president of the America-Georgia Business Council, a Senior Fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council and Senior Adjunct Professor at the School of International Service, American University in Washington DC.
Ambassador Kenneth Yalowitz is a retired career U.S. Ambassador to Georgia and Belarus. Since retirement he has been a faculty member at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University as well as an adjunct at Washington and Lee, Mount Holyoke and now at Virginia Tech.
Elizabeth Zaldastani Napier is a Trustee of the G. Zaldastanishvili American Academy in Tbilisi and Board Member of American Friends of Georgia. She worked at Harvard Business School, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and is currently with the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. She led the Georgian American Diaspora organization from 1995 to 2005 and helped launch the America Georgia Business Council.