Ioannis Armakolas (PhD, Cantab) is Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics of Southeast Europe at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki) and ‘Stavros Costopoulos’ Senior Research Fellow and Head of the South-East European Programme at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal ‘Southeast European and Black Sea Studies’, published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom) & ELIAMEP, and of the ‘Political Trends & Dynamics in Southeast Europe’, the magazine of the regional office of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES Dialogue South-East Europe, Sarajevo).

His previous affiliations include: Economic & Social Research Council Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford; Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford; Director of the South-East Europe Programme at the Hellenic Centre for European Studies (EKEM, think tank of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs); Director of Research at the US-Greece Task Force: Transforming the Balkans (Joint Research Programme of EKEM and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC); Region Head for South-East Europe at the strategic consulting company ‘Oxford Analytica’, UK; Tip O’Neill Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Initiative on Conflict Resolution & Ethnicity (joint program of Ulster University & United Nations University) in Northern Ireland; lecturer in various Greek universities and police and military academies. He was also key researcher on Bosnia-Herzegovina in the research program ‘Cultural Heritage and Reconstruction of Identities after Conflict’ (CRIC), which was funded by the European Commission under the Framework Program 7.

Ioannis Armakolas also has several years of experience as a consultant for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UK Department of International Development (DFID), Greek Ministry of Defence, Open Society and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung projects in the Western Balkans and has worked with international companies such as KPMG Management Consulting, Bearing Point and Coffey International. He has been engaged as research coordinator, lead researcher and co-author in many scholarly studies and policy reports focusing on the Western Balkans.

Migration-related publications

– Skleparis, D., Armakolas, I. (2016). “The refugee crisis and the role of NGOs, civil society and media in Greece”, in D. Phillips (ed.), Balkan Human Corridor: Essays on the Refugee and Migrant Crisis from Scholars and Opinion Leaders in Southeast Europe, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York.

– Karatrantos, T., Armakolas, I. (2016). “Building fences and closing borders – Experience and implications”, in D. Phillips (ed.), Balkan Human Corridor: Essays on the Refugee and Migrant Crisis from Scholars and Opinion Leaders in Southeast Europe, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York.

– Armakolas, I., Karatrantos, T. (2016). “Infiltration of terrorists in mixed migration flows”, in D. Phillips (ed.), Balkan Human Corridor: Essays on the Refugee and Migrant Crisis from Scholars and Opinion Leaders in Southeast Europe, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York.

Migration-related conferences

– Ioannis Armakolas, “The mixed-migration crisis and the Balkan region: Some preliminary observations”, in European Migrant Crisis Symposium: Challenges of a Fragmented Corridor, SEE View – Working Paper no.01, South-East European Research Centre, Thessaloniki, March 2016.