“On the other side of the table”: refugee counsellors from the former USSR in Bavaria
We invite you for an open seminar at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, at which we will host Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne (Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg).

During the seminar, Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne will talk about her ethnographic research on the social engagement of “Russian Germans” in Bavaria in relation to the war in Ukraine. The title of her presentation is: “On the other side of the table”: refugee counsellors from the former USSR in Bavaria.
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne holds a PhD in social anthropology and is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European studies (IOS) in Regensburg. She has obtained her PhD degree from the University of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and was simultaneously an associate Member at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. After working in the social and educational sector with refugees and migrant organizations and as a lecturer at the Ruhr University Bochum, she was a researcher at RECET (University of Vienna) from March 2021 to March 2024 as part of the research network “Ambivalences of the Soviet: Diaspora Nationalities between Collective Experiences of Discrimination and Individual Normalization, 1953-2023”.
Her first book, Staatsbürgerschaft an der Grenze. Die georgischsprachigen Ingiloer in Aserbaidschan [Citizenship at the border. The Georgian-speaking Ingilo people in Azerbaijan] was published by Reichert Verlag in 2023 (in German).
Her second book, Auf der Suche nach dem guten Leben. Postsowjetische Gemeinschaften in Osnabrück [In search of the good life. Post-Soviet communities in Osnabrück], was published by transcript in 2024 (in German).