Nina Belyaeva
Founder and Dean of GNU, lecturer
Some facts about Nina
- Graduated with honors from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, defending her diploma thesis “The Role of Minor Parties in the Two-Party System of the United States.”
- Defended her Candidate of Sciences dissertation “The Political Activity of Public Organizations in the USSR and Its Legal Support,” based on the examples of new “informal” associations that emerged during perestroika.
- Founded the Interlegal Foundation for Political and Legal Studies, its name combining the words “International” and “Legal.” The foundation worked to improve legal literacy among the population and involve citizens in lawmaking through civic legal expertise in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, supported by grants from Russian and foreign donors. The foundation became a member of the Standing Commission of International Non-Governmental Organizations of the Council of Europe.
- Created a working group to develop the Law of the Russian Federation “On Public Associations” and is its principal author. The law was adopted in 1995, and in that same year more than 30,000 civic associations were registered under it. She also actively participated in the development of the Laws of the Russian Federation “On Political Parties” and “On Charitable Organizations.”
- Based on her teaching experience at Georgetown University, USA, she created the Department of Public Policy at the State University — Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Together with the department’s faculty, she launched the international master’s program “Political Analysis and Public Policy” with a specialization in Human Rights and Democratic Governance. Thanks to academic ties with colleagues in Italy, she created a Double Degree Master Program with the University of Bologna. During the department’s work from 2000 to 2022, more than 600 students from Russia and 34 countries around the world received master’s degrees and now work in the fields of public policy and human rights across all continents.
- She is actively engaged in research and publishes with international publishers and in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of civil society, public policy, civic participation, and think tanks. Her publications can be found by searching Google Scholar for Nina Belyaeva.
- She defended her PhD dissertation at the Faculty of Law of the University of Turin on the topic “Legal Transplants and Policy Transfers in Regulating Freedom of Assembly. Legal History of Russia from the 15th Century to the Bolotnaya Events of 2012.”
- She has taught at leading universities around the world, including Johns Hopkins University, Colorado College, Georgetown University, Columbia University in the USA; the University of Salzburg in Austria; the University of Bologna and the University of Turin in Italy; Sciences Po Lyon, Université Grenoble Alpes in France; and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
- After arriving in Georgia, together with colleagues from HSE University, she created Global Nomad University.
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