Vanassche, Sarah

Position 
Research Intern
Nationality 
Belgium
At UNU-CRIS 
15/01/2024 to 30/06/2024
Biographical Statement 

Sarah Vanassche was a research intern at UNU-CRIS. She has a Master in Modern Comparative Literature and Political Sciences, from Ghent University. For her master’s thesis, she investigated the role that gender dynamics play in Serbian and Belarusian politics. She is currently working towards a PhD fellowship in which she wants to look at the anti-gender movement and its impact on national and international politics in the wider European region. 

Throughout both her master programs, Sarah’s research interests have gravitated towards Eastern Europe. At first, she mostly approached this from a history and geopolitical. Recently however, she has pivoted towards attitudes concerning gender, diversity and inclusivity and how these impact policies on the national and international levels.

During her internship, she worked under the supervision of Fabienne Bossuyt as part of the Regions and Cities Governance Lab. Here, she continued to investigate this relationship between gender policies and geopolitics. She did this both on a general level and as it manifested itself in Georgia. For this, she worked alongside Sevinj Samadzade.