Elia Bescotti is a PhD Student of Political Science at CEVIPOL, Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses on international legal discourse and identity-building in conflicts of secession in the post-Soviet space, with the Georgian-Abkhaz context and the Transnistrian settlement as his cases. He holds a Double Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Florence and World Politics from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Elia is visiting REES during HT and TT 2023 with the financial support of the Wiener-Anspach Foundation, Brussels. Before that, Elia worked as a Research Associate at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, Germany, from 2019 until 2022. Elia is also an Associated Doctoral Student at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (GS-OSES) at the University of Regensburg.