A warm welcome to Dr. Ivan Bakalov, new Research Associate at the Chair

On July 1^st Dr. Ivan Bakalov joined the team at the Chair of International Relations as research associate and lecturer. Before coming to Dresden he taught at Leiden University and at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia and held visiting research fellowships in Philipps-University Marburg and the University of Vienna. He obtained his PhD in International Relations (with distinction) at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences in 2020.

In his research, Ivan Bakalov focusses on studying the concepts and theories of power in world politics with a particular interest in the dynamic societal transformations of Eastern Europe. More recently, he has integrated a critical political economy perspective into his research and will explore the implications for the study of violence with a pilot research project funded by the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (Violence and Transformation: The Political Economy of Russia’s War against Ukraine).

Ivan Bakalov’s teaching experience covers conceptual-theoretical (power in world politics, theories of IR), empirical (EU-Russian relations, Russian foreign policy), and methodological (case-study research, process tracing) courses taught at the BA, MA, and PhD levels. He already made a contribution to the course curriculum for the summer semester 2024 at the Chair by teaching a block seminar on power in world politics.