Simonida Kacarska is a PhD candidate in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She holds a BA in Political Science-International Relations and European Studies from the American University in Bulgaria and a MA in European Politics from the University of Sussex. She has both practitioner and research experience related to the political transformation and European integration of the Balkans. She was a OSI/FCO research fellow at the University of Oxford in 2008 and since then has also done research at the University of Kent in Brussels and the University of Siena. She has published in both regional and international journals on the topics of democratization of the Western Balkans and its European integration.
