Tea Kamushadze – PhD in Anthropology (2019), is an Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA).
In 2025, she is conducting research at the University of Oxford under the joint research program of the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia and Oxford University’s “Georgian Studies” initiative (UOGSP-24-014), titled “Intersections of Tradition and Modernity: Reassessing Georgian Ethnology in Postcolonial and Digital Perspectives.”
She is the principal investigator of the Rustaveli National Science Foundation’s fundamental research grant “Covid Pandemic and Georgia: Anthropological Research of a New Reality” (FR-21-14562). As a researcher, she also participates in the project “Russia–Ukraine War and Georgia: Local Implications of a Global and Regional Crisis” (FR-23-2282).
Dr. Kamushadze was a recipient of the Rustaveli Foundation’s Postdoctoral Research Grant for Young Scientists (2019–2021). She also received a doctoral scholarship from the Central Asia and Caucasus Research and Training Initiative (CARTI, 2011–2014), during which she spent one semester as a visiting researcher at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
From 2010 to 2013, she participated in the Open Society Institute’s (Budapest) Higher Education Support Program project “Anthropological Studies of Secularism and Religion.” She was also awarded the Lane Kirkland Scholarship administered by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation and the Fulbright Program, spending two academic semesters at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where she obtained a diploma.
Tea Kamushadze has been involved in numerous international and local research projects and has published more than 30 scholarly works. She has participated in over 60 international and national conferences. She is the author of the monograph “Soviet Heritage of Rustavi – Big Issues of the Small Place” (2022), based on her doctoral and postdoctoral research.
She has extensive experience in teaching Georgian as a second language and is the author of several textbooks in this field. She also has substantial experience in university administration (2003–2020), including planning and managing academic programs.
She regularly participates in various international summer and winter schools as a lecturer.
She has organized and participated in numerous local and international academic conferences.
Tea Kamushadze is also a research fellow at the Ivane Javakhishvili Institute of History and Ethnology and a visiting lecturer at Tbilisi State University (TSU).
Courses:
- Introduction to Anthropology
- Diversity and Tolerance
- Anthropology of Post-Soviet Transitional Economy
At Other Universities:
- History of Religions
- Religion in the Modern World
- Empirical Methods in Cultural Studies
- Anthropology of Religion (MA course)
- Economic Anthropology (MA course)
- Anthropology of Violence (MA course)
- Methodology of the Humanities (For PhD Students)
Research and Publications:
- “The Effect of the Pandemic – When the State Met Citizens in Marneuli.” Materials for the Ethnography of Georgia, Vol. IV (30), pp. 192–227. Universal Publishing, Tbilisi, 2023. ISSN 2667-9582. (In Georgian)
- Soviet Heritage of Rustavi – Big Issues of the Small Place. Tbilisi State University Press, Tbilisi, 2022. (In Georgian)
- “Courtyard Chapels of Rustavi: Sacralization or Desacralization of Urban Public Spaces?!” Materials for the Ethnography of Georgia, Vol. II (28), pp. 295–312. PrintGeo, Tbilisi, 2021.(In Georgian)
- “Ilori in the Memory of Internally Displaced Persons: Experience, Identity, and Contemporary Challenges.” In Ethno-Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Communication in Georgia (Proceedings of the International Conference), pp. 111–135. Tbilisi, 2021. (In Georgian)
- “On the Interpretation of Religious Pluralism in Post-Socialist Rustavi.” Materials for the Ethnography of Georgia, Vol. I (27), pp. 114–132. PrintGeo, Tbilisi, 2020. (In Georgian)
- The Effects of the Pandemic: The State, Citizens, and Ways of Communication. International Journal of Multilingual Education, #23. DOI: 10.22333/ijme.2023.23000; pp. 67-87. link https://doi.org/10.22333/ijme.2023.23005
- Representations of Religious Plurality in the Urban Space of Post-Socialist Rustavi ISSN-Print 2199-8108 ▪ ISSN-Internet 2199-8116, NEW DIVERSITIES Vol. 23, No. 2, 2021 an open-access journal published by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, published by MPI MMG
- Invisible Traces of Islam in the Urban Space of Rustavi: Interpreting the Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Georgia, International Journal for Multilingual Education; Tbilisi Vol. 18, (2021): 54-70, 54A. DOI:10.22333/ijme 2021.18004 ISSN: (Print) ISSN 1987-9601 (Online) E ISSN 1512-3146
Projects:
Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Teaching, Department of Anthropology, University of Messina, Messina, Italy, May 6–20, 2022.
Research interests:
Issues of socialization in traditional societies; religious and economic aspects of post-Soviet transformations in Georgia; urban space, transformation, and memory; ethnic and religious minorities; postcolonial theories; and digital anthropology.
