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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

Nicola Scaraggi

Nicola Scaraggi is a Master’s student in International Relations at LUISS University in Rome, specializing in Security Studies, with academic experience at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., where he focused on Intelligence and Cybercrime. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, with research centered on climate security and conflict dynamics.

He serves at the Operations in the Information Environment (OIE) desk of the Irregular Warfare Center, conducting analysis on Open Source Intelligence and cognitive warfare.

Previously, he interned at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – Directorate General for Political and Security Affairs – supporting research and strategic assessment on issues affecting Italy’s national security and foreign policy.

His broader interests include hybrid warfare and the intersection between intelligence, technology, and global politics.
Noemi Ciarniello

Noemi Ciarniello graduated in Philosophy at University of Bologna and holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at SOAS. She is a postdoctoral researcher at LUISS University, with a project on the assessment of D&I policies in public and private environments. Her research focuses on the relationship between current political/economic trends and gender, with particular attention to the rise of neoliberal feminism and the economic, political, and sociological implications of this intersection. She has been a research associate at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a member of the editorial board of DWF, a longstanding Italian journal dedicated to gender studies and feminist political practices.
Novella Oliana

Novella Oliana is a transdisciplinary researcher, a lecturer at LUISS University and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and a visual artist based in Rome. She received her initial training in cultural studies focused on the Mediterranean and the Middle East (University of Naples L’Orientale – Italy) and holds a practical-theoretical PhD in Visual Arts (Université Aix-Marseille – France) focused on contemporary visual representations in the Mediterranean. She is interested in the perception of the Middle East and of the Mediterranean identity through images; in particular, she focuses on the current phenomena of the displacement of images, whether material or mental and cultural, mainly considered as migrations through territories of all kinds and as fluctuations between media. Her works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad in group and solo exhibitions, and have appeared in various books, catalogues and journals.

Her latest publications as an author include the following: “Possibili idee di mare”, in Il corpo solitario. L’autoscatto nella fotografia contemporanea, a cura di Giorgio Bonomi, Edizioni Rubbettino 2022; “The Mediterranean surface and the archetype of the island as contemporary paradigms for accessing cultural commons”, in Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics. A multidisciplinary perspective, Università di Catanzaro, (ed. Macrì, Morea, Trimarchi), Springer edizioni 2020; “Cartografia performativa del Mediterraneo”, in Arcoscenico, catalogo del progetto e della mostra curata da Numero Cromatico e MiBACT, Roma 2020; “What I need to be myself elsewhere”, in Il sangue delle donne. Tracce di rosso sul panno bianco, a cura di Manuela De Leonardis, Postmedia Books 2018; “Chambres, univers: fragments dun espace inventé. Photographie, interférence et récit dans la représentation dun lieu liminaire”, in Espaces d’interférence narrative, Art et récit au XXI siècle, ed. Jean Arnaud, Bruno Goosse, PUM Université de Toulouse 2018; “Lo spazio dell’abitare e una categoria dello spirito”, in L’Aquila 2010: dietro la catastrofe, Meridiana Rivista di Scienze Sociali, n. 65-66, ed. Viella, Roma 2018; “Il linguaggio dell’Altro: la rivista egiziana Wajhat al-Nadhar e l’11 settembre”, in Oriente Moderno, 3/224, Istituto per l’Oriente, Roma 2018.
Pietro Pustorino

Pietro Pustorino is full professor of international law in Luiss Guido Carli since 2017. He is in Luiss co-director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, Teaching Area Leader for international law, responsible for the Erasmus Program (Department of Law) and member of the PhD Committee on Law and Business. He is also Director of the Master on International Comparative European Union Law and on Public International Law, Luiss. He was visiting scholar and professor in many European and non-European Universities. He was appointed as expert or counsel by the Italian government for many dossiers on public intenational law as diplomatic protection, protection of human rights, climate change (member of the Committee of experts in support to the G20 on Climate and Energy held in 2021) etc.
Rebecca Maria Perla Iotti

Rebecca Maria Perla Iotti is a PhD candidate at LUISS Guido Carli University. Her research interests intersect across International Relations, Geopolitics, and Political Economy, with a focus on Chinese Economic Statecraft. She previously earned a Master’s degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Bologna and studied at the University of Bologna and Sciences Po Paris. She is currently a Teaching Assistant at LUISS University.
Renata Pipicelli

Renata Pepicelli is Associate Professor of History of Islamic countries at the department of Civilizations and forms of knowledge at University of Pisa, where she teaches History of contemporary Arab world and Islamic Studies. In 2017 she was visiting scholar at the University of Bristol, in 2018 at the University Cadi Ayyad of Marrakesh, in 2020 at the University of Kairouan, in May 2022 at University of Granada. Her scholarly activity focuses on gender studies in Islamic contexts, particularly in North Africa and Europe, social movements and Islamism in the MENA region. Recently she has also started to investigate the subject of enviromental crises and social movements in the Arab world. Her 2010 book titled Femminismo islamico: Corano, diritti, riforme is considered a milestone in the field of studies on gender in Islamic context with 10 reprints. Her book Il velo nell’Islam: Storia, politica, estetica (Carocci 2012) was translated in Finnish by the publishing house Vastapaino in 2014. 
Satoko Kawamura

Satoko Kawamura is Professor and Associate Dean at the College and the Graduate School of International Relations of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto Japan. Deputy Director at the Institute of Humanities, Human and Social Sciences of the Kinugasa Research Organization of Ritsumeikan. Specialized fields: International Relations (Governance of Advanced Technology, Thought of International Relations), International Administration, the Law of International Relations, and the Sociology of International Relations. Currently work: A research about the system of transnational governance and its norms, which are established by not only states or international organizations but also non-state actors that regulate themselves voluntarily. On Global Order: The Resonance of Transborder Thought, Institutions, and Norms published in Japanese is under translation into English.
Sofia Eliodori

Sofia Eliodori earned her Ph.D. in International Relations from the University for Foreigners of Perugia in 2022. Currently, she is collaborating with the Law department of LUISS Guido Carli as a Postdoctoral Fellow, engaged in the Horizon project EUARENAS, focusing on the democratic dynamics in cities. Her primary area of interest lies in understanding the intricacies of United States domestic and foreign policy, Atlantic relations, and Italy-US relations. She’s also attentive to populism, diasporas, public communication and public diplomacy.
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Thomas Christiansen

Thomas Christiansen joined Luiss University as a Professor in the Political Science Department in September 2019. He previously held positions at Maastricht University, at the European Institute of Public Administration, at Aberystwyth University of Wales and at Essex University. He is Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration and co-editor (with Sophie Vanhoonacker) of the ‘European Administration Governance’ book series at Palgrave Macmillan. He has published widely on different aspects of European Union politics. He recently co-authored, with Emil Kirchner and Uwe Wissenbach, The European Union and China (London: Palgrave, 2019) and co-edited, with Elena Griglio and Nicola Lupo, The Routledge Handbook of Parliamentary Administrations (London: Routledge, 2023).