De facto states research unit
Our team
| Eiki Berg is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Tartu. He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals on different aspects of de facto state dynamics. He is co-editor of The Politics of International Interaction with De Facto States: Conceptualising Engagement without Recognition (Routledge, 2018) and co-author of De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements: Territory and Recognition at Odds (Routledge, 2022). In 2012, he received the National Science Award in the field of Social Sciences, for the research in “Identities, Conflicting Self-Determination and De Facto States”. |  |
| Scott Pegg is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He is the author of International Society and the De Facto State (Routledge 1998/2019) and has published in such journals as African Affairs, Extractive Industries and Society, Foreign Policy Analysis, Geoforum, International Studies Perspectives and Journal of Modern African Studies. Dr. Pegg served as an international election observer for Somaliland’s presidential election in 2017 and its parliamentary and local council elections in 2021 and Somaliland’s political development remains one of his central research interests. |
 |
| Ana Maria Albulescu is a Research Fellow in Conflict Studies at the University of Tartu. She defended her PhD in War Studies (Kings College London, 2019). Her research focuses on dynamics of frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, de facto states, democratisation and international peace-building efforts. She is the author of Incomplete Secession After Unresolved Conflicts: Political Order and Escalation in the Post-Soviet Space (Routledge, 2021) and Third-Party Mediation and Peace Processes in the Post-Soviet Space: Norms, Interests and Power (Routledge, 2026). |
 |
| Shpend Kursani is a Lecturer at the University of Tartu. He defended his PhD thesis on Contested States: The Struggle for Survival and Recognition in the Post-1945 International Order (European University Institute, 2020). He has published on coordinated recognition practices of de facto states and has ongoing works on conceptual, theoretical, and methodological aspects of the study of de facto states. |
 |
| Kristel Vits is a PhD researcher at the University of Tartu. Her research interests include de facto state agency and international engagement. She has published on foreign policy endeavours of Post-Soviet de facto states. Her thesis on De Facto State Foreign Policy: Seeking Agency Between Patron-Client Relationships and Engagement Without Recognition studies how de facto states seek to exercise and negotiate agency within asymmetric international environments characterised by dependence, limited recognition, and geopolitical competition.ddd |
 |
| Katharina Buchsbaum is a master’s student at the University of Tartu and research assistant at the De Facto States Research Unit. Her interests include the dynamics of sovereignty and how they are shaped by broader geopolitical structures and calculations. On the DFSRU blog, she has written on Bosnia and Herzegovina and on general developments in the world of de facto states. |
 |
