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.