BSIS PhD Researcher Octavius Pinkard is currently in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The mission is headed by Ambassador Peter Tejler, former Swedish Ambassador to Iran, and is led by a core team of 15 international experts based in Sarajevno, and 22 long-term observers deployed throughout the country. As a long-term observer, Octavius meets with political stakeholders, election officials, and other actors as part of field assessments and reporting to the core team. He is also coordinating briefing and debriefing sessions for the 14 short-term observers that he and his deployment partner will manage in their Area of Observation (AoO), which is Canton 10, in addition to some zones of Republika Srpska.
Octavius’ research focuses on conflict-generated diaspora communities and interethnic relations in their countries of settlement. He is currently examining the question of whether sectarianism travels among the Lebanese diaspora in the United States and Senegal. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS, University of London. He is frequently recruited by the US Department of State and seconded to OSCE missions in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.