Speaker

Natalie Sabanadze became Georgia’s ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the head of the Georgian Mission to the European Union in May, 2013.   Prior to assuming her current position, Sabanadze worked as the senior adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in The Hague.

She held a number of posts with the OSCE HCNM, including head of Central and South East Europe section and more recently, head of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia section.

Natalie Sabanadze studied at Swarthmore and Mount Holyoke Colleges in the United States, before obtaining her Master’s in International Relations with distinction at the London School of Economics in 1999. In 2005, she completed her doctorate in Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, where she was a Dulverton Scholar.

Sabanadze has written and lectured extensively on questions of post-communist transition, political theory, nationalism, ethnic conflict and national minorities.