Experts

Belarusian philologist, translator, writer, poet and politician, in 1990-1995, Member of the Supreme Council of the Byelorussian SSR / the Parliament of Belarus, 12th legislature; member of the BNF opposition, with anti-Communist and pro-independence origins. In 1996—99, 2007-2009 he acted as the Chairman of the BPF Party; PhD since 1989. In 1980 he graduated from the Minsk University of Foreign Languages​​. He taught at the Polatsk State University in 1981-1990. From 1991 he was deputy director at the Belarusian Lyceum of Humanities. He was arrested many times for his oppositional activities against the regime of Alexander Lukashenka. His lyceum was forced to become an underground school in 2003.His first publications appeared in print in 1985 in the Byelorussian SSR . Since 1989 he belongs to the Union of Belarusian Writers. He has translated works from Latin, Ancient Greek, German, English , French, Polish, Czech and other languages. In 2003  he was elected chairman of the Belarusian PEN Club and he held this position until October 2005. In total, his name was signed by more than 200 publications. His scientific achievements include the development of the methodology of language and literature , linguistics and literary studies.

Is the President of Unia & Polska, a pro-European organisation. He worked with the Financial Times as its Warsaw Correspondent from 1976 to 2000 and later published Unia & Polska, a magazine devoted to EU issues. He writes for openDemocracy and is associate editor on the Europe section of Europe’s World. He is a co-chair of Steering Committee of Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. He studied modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a Commander (II class) of the Stella della Solidarieta’ Italiana.

Associate professor of social anthropology at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava. He researches on social and political movements. He is collaborator of the Research Centre of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (RC SFPA), editor-in-chief of the journal OS – Občianska spoločnosť and regular feuilletonist of the Czech bimonthly Listy. He is an author of Nation and Religion: The Politics of Commemoration in South-east Poland (Münster: Lit 2007). Currently he is preparing his monograph on workers and tolerance in Eastern Europe. Among his recent works are ‘Tasting Wine in Slovakia: Post-socialist Elite Consumption of Cultural Particularities’ (in Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass. Rachel E. Black and Robert C. Ulin eds, Bloomsbury Publishing 2013) and a book of essays Slovenská ideológia a kríza. Eseje z antropológie politiky (Slovak Ideology and Crisis. Essays in Anthropology of Politics, Bratislava: Kalligram 2012).

PhD at Charles University, Prague in Political Science, recipient of numerous fellowships and professional courses in the U.S., Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Italy and Slovenia. In 1999 he was a research fellow at Institute of International Relations, Prague, between 2001-2006 lecturer at University of West Bohemia Pilsen teaching global issues. Since 2001, a reporter for the Czech economic daily Hospodářské noviny, and since 2006 the head of the foreign desk. Previously, he worked in various Czech written media outlets, incl. TV and radio. He has published articles in the Serbian, Slovak and Polish press. His main areas of expertise include: Central Europe, Balkans, security policy, transatlantic relations, globalization, Latin America and Spain. From 2009 onwards, lecturerin Central and Eastern European Political Systems at the Metropolitan University in Prague. Author of a book A Third Decade: about the Life, Politics and People between Brussels and Gazprom.