Malkhaz Toria

Hi, I'm Malkhaz Toria

Malkhaz Toria (Ph.D. 2009) is an Associate Professor of history and the director of the Memory Studies Center in the Caucasus at Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia). He is also a doctoral candidate in sociology at the New School for Social Research (NYC, The USA). His research interests focus on theories of history and the epistemology of historical knowledge; Tsarist and Soviet imperial legacies and the politics of identity, belonging, and boundary-making in contemporary Georgia; politics of memory and dealing with the totalitarian past in post-Soviet societies; modern museology and memorial culture; the instrumentalization of history and politics of exclusion and ethnic cleansing in Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia/Tskhinvali. He has held fellowships (Fulbright, DAAD, OSF, etc.) at the New School for Social Research, Central European University (CEU), Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL), Humboldt University of Berlin, University of California, Berkeley, the Harriman Institute of Columbia University and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.

Point of No Return: Georgia’s Democratic Uprising

Photo credit: Badri Okujava. Introduction: A Nation at the Edge Georgia stands at a pivotal moment in its modern history. Since late October this year, protests... Read more.

Georgia’s Turn Toward Illiberalism and the “Uses and Abuses” of History

The Erosion of Memory Consensus The political and symbolic imaginary, the “memory consensus” regarding Georgia’s path toward Europe has come... Read more.