Zarina Burkadze is an associate professor of political science at Ilia State University Tbilisi, Georgia. She is a founding member and secretary general of the Georgian Association for Public Opinion Research, and author of Great Power Competition and the Path to Democracy – The Case of Georgia, 1991-2020 (Rochester University Press, 2022). She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Zurich and was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at the Elliott School of International Affairs, IERES, George Washington University (2019-20). She was also a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Her research interests revolve around the topics of democratization, Europeanization, democracy, and autocracy promotion. She enjoys teaching and delivers courses on research design, political violence and democracy for bachelor, master, and doctoral level students.