Chiara Lovotti, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and Visiting fellow at the Russian and Eastern European Studies Centre (REES) of the University of Oxford. She is a specialist on conflict studies, civil wars and foreign interventions. She published extensively on Russia’s intervention in countries of the Middle East and North Africa, and is currently interested in exploring the connections between the war in Ukraine and Russia’s scramble for Africa. She recently obtained a PhD from the University of Bologna in which she analysed the Soviet Union’s foreign policy in postcolonial Arab countries. Chiara is also the Scientific Coordinator of the “Rome MED-Mediterranean Dialogues” conference, the Italian Foreign Ministry’s annual flagship event organised in cooperation with ISPI; and is also an Alumna of The Europaeum. She speaks Italian, English, French, Russian and has a basic knowledge of Arabic.