Nino Zhgenti
Senior Fellow 2026–2027

Nino Zhghenti is Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Tbilisi (GE) and a member of the university's Memory and Anxiety Research Lab. She holds an MSc from the University of Oxford (UK) and a PhD from the University of Milan (IT). Her research lies at the intersection of political sociology, cultural sociology, and social psychology, with a focus on political polarization, emotions, and democratic participation in the context of social protests.

Her current work examines how historical experiences, cultural narratives, and shared emotions shape collective identities and relationships between opposing groups, particularly in post-Soviet societies. Drawing on qualitative, experimental, and visual methods, she studies how people interpret political conflict, perceive threats, and sustain solidarity during periods of democratic uncertainty.

Her broader aim is to develop context-sensitive approaches to political polarization that connect cultural interpretation with empirical social research. Her work is motivated by an interest in how societies marked by conflict and rapid political change understand democracy, disagreement, and the possibility of cooperation.