Francesco Trupia, PhD, Researcher & Policy Analyst
I am Research Adjunct at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń – Poland. I am currently PI of the research project “Civic Responses and Cultural Identity Dilemmas of the Second Generation of Balkan Muslims in Time of Illiberal Democracy”, supported by the National Science Centre in Krakow (Poland).
My research interests range from identity and memory politics to minority inclusion, from postsocialist democratisation to studying civil society in Southeast Europe and the Caucasus.
In 2023, I interned at the Centre for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw (Poland) and the Centre of Political History at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) for my current research project. In spring 2022, I also carried out part of my postdoctoral research at the Department of Slavic Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). I obtained a PhD in Political Philosophy from the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria (2020). While pursuing my doctorate, I attended summer programs in Germany, Russia, Serbia, and Kosovo.
I have also worked as a Policy Analyst. I am a member of the 9th Cycle of the Young Academics Network at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies – FEPS, Brussels. Over the last decade, I have executed research studies and analyses for the Institute of European Democrats in Brussels, the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society in Pristina, the Center for Security Analysis and Prevention – CSAP from Prague, the Caucasus Resource Research Centre in Yerevan, and the London-based “Institute for Islamic Strategic Affairs – IISA. My op-ed articles appear in Cross-Border Talks, Lossi36, Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa, and the Forum for Ukrainian Studies.
After concluding my BA in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Catania, Italy, in 2014, I moved to Bulgaria to work in the NGO sector. There, I studied Philosophy at the MA International Program (taught in English) at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Between 2014 and 2015, I interned at the NGO Focus – European Centre for Development, working with vulnerable groups in the city of Pazardzhik. I later volunteered for the Caritas-led “Refugee Project” in Sofia, where I taught English and Art classes for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. I am a Mentor for the Polonium Foundation and engaged in other informal cooperation with networks of scholars, students, and activists.
