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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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Paolo Glisenti

Paolo Glisenti is a journalist, international strategist, and expert in communication and large-scale event management, known for his leadership as Italy’s Commissioner General for Expo 2020 Dubai and Expo 2025 Osaka–Kansai. With a background in economic and financial journalism in London, New York, and Italy, he held senior executive roles in major multinational companies—including News Corp Europe and Montedison USA—and served on the boards of listed firms across media, telecoms, and pharmaceuticals. Founder of PGConsultants, he has advised governments, institutions, and corporations on communication strategies and international bids, playing a pivotal role in Milan’s successful campaign for Expo 2015, for which he was awarded the Knighthood of Merit of the Italian Republic. His work blends public diplomacy, strategic vision, and deep industry knowledge, making him a key figure in Italy’s global outreach and event diplomacy.
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Raffaele Marchetti

Raffaele Marchetti (Laurea, Rome-La Sapienza; PhD, London-LSE) is Deputy Rector for Internationalization and Professor in International Relations at the Department of Political Science and the School of Government of LUISS. His research interest concerns global politics and governance, hybrid and city diplomacy, transnational civil society, (cyber-)security and political risk, and democracy.

He acts as external expert for the European Commission and other public/private institutions on issues of global governance, public policies, civil society, and security. He is ISA’s United Nations-NGO Representative (2022-2024). He is also member of the editorial board of The International Spectator, the Academic Advisory Board of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), LabGov – the LABoratory for the GOVernance of the City as a Commons, International Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IISES). He is the editor of the Routledge series Innovations in International Affairs and the Luiss University Press series Radar.
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Rosario Forlenza

Rosario Forlenza specializes in the history of modern Europe and Italy in its global implications. He works at the intersection of history, politics and anthropology and focuses particularly on democracy and authoritarianism, political revolutions, nationalism and the politics of memory, politics and religion, symbolic politics, and the Cold War. He has written six books, co-edited two volumes, and published over forty peer-reviewed articles and chapters, most notably in The American Historical Review, Past & Present, and Journal of Contemporary History, He is currently working on a comparative history of revolutions from the perspective of political anthropology, on the totalitarian experiences in interwar Russia, Italy, and Germany, and on the global history of Christian Democracy.
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Silvia Menegazzi

Silvia Menegazzi is Head of the AsiaLAB Research Unit and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Luiss Guido Carli University, where she teaches International Relations and Asian Studies. Her research interests span International Relations, Global Governance, and Area Studies, with a particular focus on the politics and economic development of Asian countries, especially China, Japan, and South Korea.

She has held visiting scholar positions at Sciences Po (Paris), George Washington University (Washington, DC), the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick, and China Foreign Affairs University (CFAU) in Beijing. Dr. Menegazzi has been the recipient of research grants and scholarships from several European and Asian institutions.

She lived in China for more than four years and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Her work has been published in academic journals and media outlets, including International Politics, Global Society, Asia Europe Journal, East Asia Forum, and China Files. Among her most recent publications are China’s Blueprint for Global Leadership: GSI, GDI, GCI and Xi Jinping’s Vision for the International Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, with M. Dian); La Cina e la politica globale (Mondadori, 2023); The NATO–South Korea strategic alignment and contemporary order-building, (International Politics, 2026, with T. Novotna).

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).