‌Phone: (+44) 28 9097 3486
E-mail: i.kovras@qub.ac.uk
Office: 19.02.006, 19 University Square 

Dr Kovras received his Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies from Queen’s University, Belfast (2011). His doctoral thesis, titled Unearthing the truth: the politics of exhumations in Spain and Cyprus, was awarded the Basis Chubb Prize for best Ph.D. thesis published in Ireland (by the Political Studies Association of Ireland). Before joining the institute he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.

 

Research Interests

Dr. Kovras’ research interests include comparative post-conflict democratization, transitional justice, contentious politics and South European politics. He is interested in two overlapping lines of research. The first, based on a global database of countries with disappeared persons, explores the impact of different transitional justice tools in dealing with the problem of missing persons in post-conflict settings. At the same time, he is investigating the growing phenomenon of post-transitional justice, namely the decision of societies to deal with human rights issues after a significant delay. The second line of research examines the political and social reactions to the sovereign debt crisis in Southern Europe. Other ongoing projects investigate innovative institutional mechanisms in times of economic crises, balancing domestic calls for justice/accountability and external (IMF) conditionality.

PUBLICATIONS 

Book Projects          

• Truth Recovery and Transitional Justice: Deferring Human Rights Issues, (Under Contract, Routledge)

Journal Articles

• ‘The Greek Debt Crisis and Southern Europe: Majoritarian Pitfalls?, (2014) Comparative Politics (forthcoming, pending minor revisions, with Neophytos Loizides)

• ‘Explaining Prolonged Silences in Transitional Justice: the Disappeared in Cyprus and Spain’, (2013) Comparative Political Studies, Vol.46, pp. 730-756.

•  ‘Cultures of Rioting and Anti-Systemic Movements in Southern Europe’, (2012) West European Politics, vol.35(4), pp. 707-725 (with Katia Andronikidou) [a short and simplified version of the paper hosted by LSE’s    EUROPP blog: http://bit.ly/UGZtzv]

• ‘Delinkage Processes and Grassroots Movements in Transitional Justice’, (2012) Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 47(1), pp.88-105

• ‘Protracted Peace processes: Policy (Un)learning and the Cyprus Debacle’, (2012) Ethnopolitics, Vol. 11, No. 4, 406–423 (with Neophytos Loizides).

• ‘Non-Apologies and Prolonged Silences in Post-Conflict Settings’, (2012) special issue on “Memory and Historical Injustice’, Time and Society, Vol.21(1), pp.71-88 (with Kathleen Ireton)

• ‘Delaying Truth Recovery for Missing Persons’, Nations and Nationalism, (2011) Vol. 17(3), pp.520-540 (with Neophytos Loizides, Cited by the Economist Magazine, March 13, 2010)

• ‘The UN’s Moral Responsibility in the ‘Spill-Over’ of Genocide from Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo’, (2011) The African Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol.19(1), pp.145-163.           

• ‘The Parliamentary Election in Greece, October 2009’, (2010) Electoral Studies, Vol.29(2), pp.293-296                      

• ‘Unearthing the Truth: The Politics of Exhumations in Cyprus and Spain’, (2008) History and Anthropology, Vol.19(4), pp.371-390.

Book Chapters

• ‘Buried Silences of the Greek Civil War’, in Down to Earth: Exhumations in the Contemporary World, (with Katherine Stefatos), Antonius Robben and Francisco Ferrándiz (eds.), University of Pennsylvania Press (Human Rights Series)

Working Papers

• ‘The Importance of Non-Economic Factors in Explaining Successes and Failures of IMF Bailout Programs’ (with Christos Papazoglou and Phyllis Papadavid)