In-house editorial staff
Dr Michael Taylor
Senior Editor, Eastern Europe
D.Phil. Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. Has worked for over twenty years as an analyst of Soviet and East European affairs, first for the BBC’s Monitoring Service, where he specialised in Afghanistan and Poland, and then for the Economist Intelligence Unit, where he specialised in the western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia), and in the prospects for NATO enlargement.
Sarah Michaels
Senior Editor, Russia/CIS
Joined Oxford Analytica after seven years analysing Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus for the US Defence and State Departments. Former Naval Reserve intelligence officer. Specialises in defence and security affairs in the former Soviet space. Educated at George Washington University (BA), the University of Chicago (MA) and King's College London, where she is writing her PhD on civil-military relations in Ukraine.
Region Heads
Dr Paul Chaisty
University Lecturer in Russian Government, University of Oxford
Specialist on Russian politics. Particular research interest in Russian constitutional and legislative politics. Recent publications include Legislative Politics and Economic Power in Russia (Palgrave, 2006) and articles in the Journal of Legislative Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies and Party Politics.
Dr Alex Pravda
Fellow and Director of the Russian and East European Centre
Author of studies on Soviet/Russian politics and foreign policy. Recent publications include Developments in Russian and post-Soviet Politics (with S L White and Z Gitelman). Has acted as specialist advisor to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons and to the BBC.
Dr David Priestland
Fellow and Tutor in Russian History and Politics, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Widely published on Russian political and constitutional issues. Has lived and travelled extensively in Russia.
Dr Gwendolyn Sasse
University Reader in Comparative Politics, and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College
Specialist on Central and East European politics, in particular Ukraine, EU enlargement, the EU's eastern neighbourhood, minority issues and ethnic conflict. Holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. Author of The Crimea Question: Identity, Transition, and Conflict (Harvard University Press, 2007); Co-Author of Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU’s Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe: The Myth of Conditionality (Palgrave, 2004). Her recent articles include The Politics of Conditionality: The Norm of Minority Protection before and after EU Accession, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2008; The European Neighbourhood Policy: Conditionality Revisited for the EU's Eastern Neighbours, Europe-Asia-Studies, Vol. 60, No. 2, 2008, pp. 295-316.
