Welcome Elia Bescotti – ScienceCampus Postdoc

The Leibniz ScienceCampus is delighted to welcome Dr Elia Bescotti to our team as a post-doctoral researcher starting from 1 April 2025 for one year.

Elia is developing a research project on “A new in-security architecture for Europe: postwar order and non-nuclear deterrence in Ukraine-Russia relations.” The project problematises: a) the conditions for mutual deterrence in the Ukraine-Russian relationship looking at deterrence theory in a comparative perspective with other protracted territorial conflicts (Korean Peninsula, Kashmir Region, Golan Heights) b) the nature of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship, in terms of discourses and practices, looking at the opposing identity discourses.

In December 2024 Elia earned his PhD in Political Science at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) defending his thesis on “Ontological in-securities in the post-Soviet politics of international law. Contested sovereignties between Georgia-Abkhazia, and Moldova-Transnistria.” The thesis an outcome of the research project “Between Conflict and Cooperation: the Politics of International Law in the Post-Soviet Space” carried out at IOS between 2019–2022 and funded by the BMBF. Elia also received financial support from the DAAD (2018–2019), and from the Wiener-Anspach Foundation (ULB) to complete his doctoral research at Russian and East European Studies, University of Oxford (Jan–Jun 2023). He is also an alumnus of the Graduate School of East and Southeast European Studies of the University of Regensburg.