{"id":3836,"date":"2019-01-25T15:17:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T15:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/?p=3836"},"modified":"2019-01-25T15:17:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T15:17:50","slug":"phd-researcher-octavius-pinkard-with-the-organization-for-security-and-cooperation-in-europe-osce-in-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/2019\/01\/25\/phd-researcher-octavius-pinkard-with-the-organization-for-security-and-cooperation-in-europe-osce-in-georgia\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD researcher Octavius Pinkard with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;color: black\">Octavius Pinkard, a PhD Researcher at BSIS,\u00a0was recently\u00a0part of the delegation sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the presidential runoff in Georgia. The OSCE is the world&#8217;s largest regional security institution. Octavius\u00a0was seconded to the mission by the US Department of State, and was deployed to Kakheti, with regional briefings and debriefings in Telavi.\u00a0There were 25 candidates in the first round of balloting (held 28 October), and the runoff between the top two finishers was held on 28 November.\u00a0\u00a0This was an historic election for multiple reasons. The victory by Salome Zurabishvili marks the first time that a female\u00a0has ever been elected president of a country in the Caucasus region.\u00a0\u00a0A constitutional change in 2017 means that this election will also\u00a0be the last time that citizens directly elect the president. In the future, the president will be chosen indirectly by parliament. In a break with\u00a0tradition, President Zurabishvili was inaugurated in Telavi, not in the capital city, Tbilisi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;color: black\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;color: black\">Octavius engages in research on conflict-generated diasporas. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and a Visiting Researcher at SOAS (University of London). During his 11 months of fieldwork in Lebanon, he spent a period of 4 months as\u00a0a Visiting Researcher at Lebanese American University in Beirut.\u00a0He is often recruited by the US Department of State to participate in observation missions of the OSCE, including assignments to\u00a0Belarus,\u00a0Kyrgyzstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina,\u00a0Moldova, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Octavius Pinkard, a PhD Researcher at BSIS,\u00a0was recently\u00a0part of the delegation sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/2019\/01\/25\/phd-researcher-octavius-pinkard-with-the-organization-for-security-and-cooperation-in-europe-osce-in-georgia\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51111,"featured_media":3837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3838,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3836\/revisions\/3838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/brussels-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}