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Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)

 

POLIS PhD candidate Tomass Pildegovičs has been awarded the first 2022 EUSA Ernst Haas Fellowship

 

The EUSA Executive Committee has announced Tomass Pildegovičs is the recipient of the 2022 EUSA Ernst Haas Fellowship. The committee consisted of Chair Sophie Meunier, along with members Elaine Fahey and Kaija Schilde.

 

Tomass Pildegovičs (born in 1997 in Riga, Latvia) is a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral research explores the Baltic states’ attempts to “learn the Brussels game” of influencing EU foreign-security policy, as part of the broader analytical puzzle of their post-accession positioning amidst the cross-cutting currents of European integration.

 

In his dissertation project, Tomass Pildegovičs conducts an original investigation of the lobbying and coalition-building strategies through which Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have participated in EU foreign-security policymaking during crises involving Russia in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood.

 

The EUSA Haas Fund Fellowship will enable this project to make a novel empirical contribution to the field of EU studies by facilitating unprecedented interview access to foreign policy establishments across the Baltic states, including former presidents, prime ministers, ministers, and diplomats. Pildegovičs will use the Haas Fund Fellowship to fund a three-month research fieldwork trip to Brussels, with the aim of conducting 35 original, semi-structured interviews with current and former top-ranking officials in the EU institutions.

 

Pildegovičs was named as a GLOBSEC Young Leader by the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum in 2021 and he has acquired professional experience at the European Parliament, European Commission, and the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. He completed his MPhil in Politics and International Relations with Distinction at the University of Cambridge in 2019. He also holds a BA in International Relations with First Class Honours (2018) from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. 

 

Find out more about the EUSA Ernst Hass Fellowship>>

 

Keep up with Tomass on Twitter here>>