Annamaria Kiss is an Hourly Paid Lecturer at the Department of War Studies. She joined King’s in 2019 to do her PhD at the King’s Russia Institute. Since, Annamaria taught on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules on contemporary Russian politics. Additionally, she has also been teaching courses on International Relations, International Security and War in World Politics at Queen Mary University of London.

Her research focuses on Russian perceptions of foreign fighters, conflict, terrorism and insurgency. Her interest is in how these perceptions translate into policy responses. Prior to joining King’s, Annamaria worked as a Research Fellow for Russia & the Post-Soviet space at the Center for European Neighborhood Studies (CENS) at Central European University in Budapest.

She holds a PhD in Russian and Eurasian Security from King’s College London, as well as an MA in Russian Studies and a BA in International Relations both from Eotvos Lorand University (Budapest). Her doctoral research was supported by the ESRC.

Research interests

• Russian foreign and security policies
• Terrorism and counterterrorism policies in Russia
• Foreign fighters
• Transnational mobilisation
• Politics of the North and South Caucasus

Annamaria’s research is at the intersection of transnational mobilisation and conflict delegation, particularly from the perspective of the Russian state. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Austria. The core interest motivating her PhD research was to understand the role of the state, not just in suppressing but also potentially facilitating or otherwise supporting foreign fighting. Such grey zones of state influence can challenge traditional expectations of conflict delegation dynamics. She is currently working on a monograph on Russian state discourses and practices related to foreign fighters and their role in domestic and foreign policy production during the Chechen wars and the Syrian intervention. Annamaria is interested in qualitative methodologies, particularly in poststructuralist approaches.

Book chapters

• Moore, C – Youngman, M - Kiss, A. (2024), ‘The Kadyrovtsy: A Private Army in Chechnya and Beyond’, in: The Palgrave Handbook of Non-state Actors in East-West Relations. Eds. By Peter Marton et al, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 869 – 884.
• Kiss, A. (2019), ‘Terrorism in Russia’, in: Jones, David M. et al (eds): Handbook of Terrorism and Insurgency Post 9/11, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 304-315.
• Kiss, A. (2019), The Means and Ends of Russo-Georgian “Normalization:” What is beyond the “Red Lines”? in: Gardner Feldman, L. et al (eds): The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation. Research in Peace and Reconciliation (RIPAR) series, Volume 4, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Research articles

• Marton, P. and Kiss, A. (2016), Chechen Combatants’ Involvement as Foreign Fighters in Ukraine and Syria and Iraq [Review article]. Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Special Issue: Violence in the Post-Soviet Space, Vol. 2, No. 2, Kuhrt, N. and Kaczmarski, M. (eds), pp. 189-220.
• Merabishvili, G. and Kiss, A. (2016), ‘The Perception of National Security in Georgia’. Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review, Vol. 14, Issue 1, December 2016, pp. 159-177.
• Kiss, A. (2015), [in Hungarian] ‘On the New Russian Military Doctrine’, Centre for Strategic and Defence Studies Papers 2015/4, National University of Public Service, Budapest

Policy papers

• Kiss, A – Rácz, A (2020), ‘Brittle Balance and the Illusion of Stability After the Nagorno-Karabakh War: Time to Abandon the Term “Frozen Conflicts’, in: Transatlantic Futures: Towards #NATO2030/ Ed. by Andris Sprūds, Mārtiņš Vargulis – Riga: Latvian Institute of International Affairs pp.73-86.
• Kiss, A (2018), Georgian Presidential Elections 2018: The show must go on, Stratpol Policy Paper, November 2018, STRATPOL – Strategic Policy Institute, Bratislava

Teaching

Current modules

- MA Dissertation (7SSWN116)

- Russia in the 21st Century: Foreign Policy, Identity and Security (6SSW0014)

Past modules

- Russia's War in Ukraine (6YYR0012)

- Russia and the European Union (6YYR0002)

- Institutions, identity and society in Russia (5YYR0002)