Currently a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham (UK) and a researcher at the Arena Programme at John Hopkins University, Jara obtained her MPhil in European Politics from Oxford and also holds an MSc in Political Theory from LSE and a BA in Philosophy from Sapienza University of Rome.
Her doctoral research focuses on Russia’s involvement in post-Soviet de facto states and related challenges to conflict resolution. Jara’s research interests Russian foreign policy, post-Soviet conflicts and de facto states, Eurasian security, Ukrainian politics, democratisation in the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries, disinformation strategies and the political use of history. She is interested in analyzing the EU and Russia’s alternative conceptions of borders from a security, legal and historical perspective vis-a-vis their contested neighborhood, and is currently looking at the de-sovereignisation processes occurring in Moldova and Ukraine as a result of Russian-instigated activities in the breakaway territories of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) and the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics (DNR/LNR).
Jara is also a project manager at Zinc Network, an international development and strategic communications business, where she works on projects focusing on the post-Soviet region.
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