Teona Lavrelashvili

Research Associate

Dr Teona Lavrelashvili is an EU policy professional and political scientist specialising in enlargement, party politics, and strategic communications. She earned her Ph.D. from KU Leuven in 2022, where she led the European Party Monitor and defended her dissertation on the role of European political parties in the EU enlargement process.

She is currently a Research Associate at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, where she is responsible for the project The European Peace: Causes, Methods, Scope, Limits. She is also an invited lecturer at Sciences Po Strasbourg and UCL Brussels.

Her previous roles include Policy Officer at the European Commission’s DG NEAR (Neighbourhood and Enlargement), adviser at the European Parliament, and coordinator of the EU Enlargement Task Force at the European Policy Centre. 

She was elected President of the College of Europe Alumni Association in 2023 and has served in this role since then. She also gained political experience by running as as a candidate in the 2024 Belgian Federal Parliament elections. 

She speaks Georgian, English, and French fluently, and regularly contributes to international media.