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RusLab

The Russia Observatory (RUSLAB) is a dedicated research hub for the study of Russia, its domestic politics, historical trajectories, and international role, combining academic rigour with policy-relevant analysis and public-facing outputs. The research is situated within the broader debate on post-liberal contestation and the transformation of the international order.

RuLAB’s work aims to integrate close analysis of domestic governance, political economy, and social dynamics with a strong historical perspective rooted in Soviet and imperial legacies. It also examines how past institutional configurations, political cultures, and identity narratives continue to shape contemporary Russian politics and society.

Thematically, the Observatory covers four main interconnected areas:

Domestic politics and society — governance structures, center–periphery relations, regional identities, social stratification, ideological, religious and cultural evolutions, and the interaction between elites and the Russian society.
Russia–Europe relations — historical entanglements, energy interdependence, security architecture, and the reconfiguration of ties under war and sanctions.
The Eurasian space — relations with neighboring states, regional integration, and alignments involving China, Turkey, India, and other major Global South actors.
Global footprint — Russia’s political, economic, and security presence in Africa, the Middle East, and Russia’s role in reshaping the broader international order.

Head of Unit

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Manfredi Valeriani

Manfredi Valeriani earned his PhD at Hamburg University and Luiss University with a thesis on “Funding Instruments to Italian NGOs” is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Luiss where he also teaches Political Risk Analysis and International Politics and Businesses. He has been Adjunct Professor at the University “L’Orientale” in Naples and at the American University of Rome. His research currently focuses on Structured Analytic Techniques, Scenario Analysis, and Italian Foreign Policy.
Marc Reverdin

Marc Reverdin is an international expert in public affairs and strategic diplomacy. He is the founder and CEO of Reverdin Consulting, a high-level advisory firm that helps companies and institutions navigate major geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges. A former French diplomat, he served in Paris, Rome, and the services of the French Prime Minister before co-founding the Paris Peace Forum, an initiative of the French President launched in 2018. He now leads or advises several international initiatives, particularly in the agrifood, African, and Mediterranean sectors. Marc is also a frequent speaker, high-level moderator, and lecturer in international affairs.
Marco Massoni

Marco Massoni (PhD, Rome 1972) is an independent political analyst and international relations expert, specialist in Africa, Latin America, and Extra-Western philosophies. Since 2022, he has been teaching African Studies at LUISS University of Rome. As of 2025, he directs the Africa and Latin America Research Unit at LUISS’s Centre for International and Strategic Studies (CISS). Previously, he served as Diplomatic Senior Advisor for the Italian G8 Presidency and worked with the EU, OSCE, UN (FAO, UNHCR), NGOs, and think tanks. From 2011 to 2017, he was Director of African Research at IRAD at the Italian Centre for Defence Higher Studies (CASD), where he still lectures. He was Editorial Director of the quarterly Politica Africana. He has taught Development Studies at The American University of Rome (AUR) and International Law and Peace Processes at Roma Tre University. He is a consultant of the European Union External Action Service (EEAS) and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), extensive experience in the field of democratisation processes, electoral observation & electoral assistance, diplomacy & negotiation, cyber-diplomacy, human rights & humanitarian law, mediation, peacebuilding & conflict resolution, post-war reconstruction and strategic studies.
Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré

Maria Giulia Amadio Vicerè is Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) in Political Science at the Department of Political Science of Luiss University and a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (EUI). Before that, she has been a Marie Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (EUI), an Adjunct Professor and post-doctoral fellow at Luiss University, and an Assistant Professor at Leiden University. She held various visiting positions in international renowned institutions, among which the German Institute for International Affairs, the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University, the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, and the Policy Institute at King’s College. Over time, she has also been the recipient of merit-based scholarships and grants from the European Commission; the Zegna Group; the Lazio Region; and the The Australian Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethic. Beyond academia, she has been a Research Associate at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a Research Fellow at the Policy Planning Unit of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, a Blue Book Trainee at the Service for Foreign Policy Instrument of the European Commission and a research intern at the European Policy Centre. Moreover, she has briefed and provided training to public and private institutions, among which the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Italian Ministry of Defence, Oxford Analytica, the European Institute for the Mediterranean, the Swedish Institute for European Studies, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Villa Vigoni, and il Sole 24 Ore Business School.
Marlène Agnès Laruelle

Marlene Laruelle is a Full Professor of Political Science at Luiss Guido Carli University and previously served as Research Professor at The George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) from 2011 to 2025, where she held leadership roles as Associate Director and Director. She earned her Ph.D. in History from INALCO in Paris and a habilitation in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris. Laruelle leads the Illiberalism Studies Program, a transatlantic platform dedicated to research on illiberalism and postliberalism, and is a non-residential Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Throughout her career, she has held fellowships and visiting appointments at notable institutions such as the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, IFRI, the Carnegie Council, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and SAIS–Johns Hopkins University. She has authored or edited over twenty books with top academic presses, including recent monographs like Ideology and Meaning-Making under Putin Regime (2025) and Russia’s Arctic: A Changing Geopolitical and Environmental Context (2026), alongside numerous articles in leading scholarly and policy publications.

Trained as a historian of ideas, Laruelle’s early work focused on post-Soviet Central Asia and Russia, examining nation-building processes, regional geopolitics, labor migration, and the intellectual underpinnings of Putin’s regime. Her research later expanded to the Russian Arctic, exploring how environmental change, infrastructure development, and territorial imaginaries influence political worldviews. More recently, she has turned to conceptual history and global comparative studies, analyzing the challenges facing liberalism and the emerging normative alternatives to the liberal international order. Her scholarship bridges academic rigor with policy relevance, offering insights into the evolving political and intellectual dynamics of Russia and the broader international system.
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Researcher

Antonio Calcara

Antonio Calcara is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He received his PhD in Political Science from the LUISS Guido Carli University in 2015. His research interests are in the fields of European security and defence-industrial issues. His twitter account is @AntonioCalcara.
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Anna Pirri Valentini is Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, where she teaches Heritage, Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development Policies. She is also Adjunct Professor of Art Market Legislation at NABA, Milan.
Dr. Pirri Valentini obtained her Ph.D. in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca (2020) and graduated in law at Sapienza University, Rome (2015).

She has been a Visiting research scholar at the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique -École normale supérieure Paris Saclay- (Paris) and at the LSE- London School of Economics and Political Science (London).
Her research focuses on the policies and regulation of cultural heritage and art law. Her first monograph will be published (2023) in the She published in Italian (Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto Pubblico, Giornale di Diritto Amministrativo, AEDON, Diritto dell’Arte) and international (International Journal of Constitutional Law) journals. Dr. Pirri Valentini is member of the International Society of Public Law (ICON·S) and the Istituto di Ricerca sulla Pubblica Amministrazione (IRPA).
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Arlo Poletti

Arlo Poletti is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento. He holds a PhD from the University of Bologna, previously held a postdoctoral position at the University of Antwerp (2009–2013), and served as Assistant Professor at LUISS Guido Carli (2013–2016) and at the University of Bologna (2016).

His roles at Trento include coordinating the BA in International Studies and serving on the Board of the Doctorate of Research in International Studies at the School of International Studies. He also acts as an expert evaluator for national and international research funding bodies.

His research lies in International Political Economy, focusing on the political economy of globalization, including the politics of trade and investment, transnational advocacy at global and EU levels, and international regulatory cooperation. Recent work examines how globalization-induced economic distress shapes individual preferences and political behavior.

He is the author of five monographs, with research published in International Organization, Regulation & Governance, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Review of International Studies, European Political Science Review, and Review of International Organizations.
Bjørn Thomassen

Bjørn Thomassen is Professor in Social Science at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University. Research areas include: history of social thought, social theory, Italian studies, global religion, urban studies, identity & memory politics, nationalism, liminality and social change, revolutions, social and cultural dimensions of globalization. He has published more than 50 articles across the social and political sciences. He is the author of ”Italy’s Christian Democracy. The Catholic Encounter with Political Modernity” (Oxford UP, 2024, with R. Forlenza), ”From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences” (Cambridge UP, 2019, with A. Szakolczai), ”Liminality and the Modern. Living Through the In-between” (Routledge, 2016), “Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City” (Indiana UP, 2014, with I. Clough-Marinaro). He is currently leader of a research project funded by Velux on “The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Global Modernities” (2021-2025).
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Carolina De Stefano

Carolina De Stefano is a Lecturer in European and Russian History at Luiss Guido Carli University and an associate member of the Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Russe, Caucasien & Centre-Européen (CERCEC-EHESS) in Paris.

After graduating in International Relations from Luiss Guido Carli University, she earned her PhD from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and a post-doc from the Finnish Academy of Sciences, with a dissertation and research project focusing on the collapse of the USSR and the handling of post-Soviet ethnic conflicts.

From 2014 until early 2022, she has conducted long-term archival research in Moscow and speaks Russian fluently. She has been a visiting researcher at several research institutions, including Harvard University, George Washington University, the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the University of Warsaw,

She is the author of Storia del Potere in Russia. Dagli Zar a Putin (Morcelliana, 2022) and has published several articles on late-Soviet and contemporary Russian history in international peer-reviewed academic journals such as Kritika (forthcoming, 2025), Russian History (2023), Cahiers du MondeRusse (2023), Russian Review (2022), the Journal of Eurasian Studies (2020). Her current book project aims to providethe first systematic historical account of the attempts made by experts and politicians under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to reform nationalities policies, handle ethnic conflicts, and give birth to a new Russia’s foreign policy towards its new neighbors in the years of the Soviet disintegration 1986-1994. This research aims to retrace some of the historical and political roots of today’s Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Since 2016, she has collaborated as a Russia expert with Oxford Analytica, as well as written analyses on Russian politics, foreign policy, and Russia-Ukraine relations for national newspapers (Il Sole 24 Ore, Corriere della Sera, Domani, and The Huffington Post).
Carolina Polito

Carolina Polito is a PhD Candidate at LUISS Guido Carli University, where she deals with the geopolitics of surveillance technologies, in particular the export of biometric technologies to developing countries. She is also an associate researcher at the Center for European Policy Studies (Brussels) where she works on Tender-based projects for the evaluations of European policies on cybersecurity. She was an associate researcher at the International Affairs Institute (IAI) where she also worked on digital-related issues such as the proliferation of cyber weapons.
Christopher Hein

Christopher Hein is Professor on contract at the University LUISS Guidi Carli, Dep. Political Science. He is a former UN international civil servant and former Director of the Italian Council for Refugees. Among his recent publications: La protezione dei diritti umani (ed.), LUISS University Press 2021; The Reform of the Dublin System, in: I Flussi Migratori e le Sfide all’Europa, ed. E. Sciso, Turin 2020.
Claudia Candelmo

Claudia Candelmo is Researcher (RTD-B) in International Law at the Department of Law, University of Udine. Previously, she was Teaching Fellow in EU Law at Durham Law School and visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Public, Comparative and International Law (Heidelberg). Her main research interests concern State responsibility and the interconnection between international humanitarian law and international human rights law.