Member of

Academic Council

Salome Samadashvili

Salome Samadashvili joined the Martens Centre as a visiting fellow in November 2013. Prior to that, Samadashvili enjoyed a decade long career in public service in her native country, Georgia. Following the democratic Rose Revolution of 2003, she was elected to be a member of the Parliament of Georgia and the Deputy-Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. In October 2005 she was appointed to represent her country in Brussels as the Head of Georgia’s Mission to the EU and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Belgium and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. She left the Georgian diplomatic service in April 2013.

During her tenure in Brussels, Georgia has successfully negotiated the Association and Free Trade Agreements with the EU, as well as the Visa Facilitation Agreement. From 2002 to 2004, Salome Samadashvili worked for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) as the Parliamentary Program Officer in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. She holds a BA degree in Political Sciences from Allegheny College, Pennsylvania, USA, as well as an LL.M degree in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and a Masters in Public Policy from the American University, Washington DC and PhD in Political Sciences from the University of Georgia. She is a recipient of the Presidential Decoration of Splendour for her outstanding service to Georgia.

Following her departure from Brussels in December 2015, Samadashvili served a six-month term as an interim Governance Director for Libya with the National Democratic Institute. In the summer of 2016, she returned to Georgia and was elected to the Parliament of Georgia, where she served two consecutive terms as senior opposition MP until 2024. She was re-elected for a third term in 2024 but democratic parties of Georgia refused to take up seats in the Parliament due to the government engineered electoral fraud in the 2024 elections. Dr. Samadashvili was a senior visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence in 2025-2026. Currently she is teaching courses on EU policy at the University of Georgia and is active in Georgian politics.