Andrei Tarasov is a PhD candidate and an academic tutor at the School of International Studies (University of Trento, Italy). He has a BA with honours in International Relations from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and an MA in International Security from the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals. He has been a research assistant at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies (Moscow) and has worked as an intern for Moscow City Government at the Department for External Economic and International Relations. He has published on separatism and nationalism in Europe with an emphasis on Catalonia and the Basque Country in Russian and international peer-reviewed journals.