Expert Council

Assoc. Prof. Maria Baramova 

Maria Baramova is an Associate Professor in Modern Balkan History at the Department of History of Byzantium and Balkan Peoples at the Faculty of History of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Her research interests and publications are related to the history of Habsburg-Ottoman relations, geopolitics and the history of surrounding space, military history and the history of peace treaties in the Early Modern period. From 2003 to 2004, she was a Herder Institute Fellow at the University of Vienna and, from 2011 to 2012, a research fellow at the Leibniz-Institutе for European History, Mainz. She has also specialized in Munich, Cologne, Hamburg and Wolfenbüttel. She is the author of articles and monographs and editor of volumes on the history of Southeastern Europe in the pre-modern era. Publications 

Assoc. Prof. Rumyana Marinova-Christidi 

Rumyana Marinova-Christidi is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and Head of “Hebraistika” BA Program (Jewish Studies). She teaches Contemporary History of Bulgaria (from the WW II until 1989), the Holocaust period, the History of the Bulgarian Jews, the History of the State of Israel, Education and Ideology during Communism, as well as Diplomatic, Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of the EU integration process in the Balkans.

Prof. Pavel Pavlovitch

Pavel Pavlovitch is professor of Medieval Arabo-Islamic Civilization at the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Pavel Pavlovitch has a BA in History from Baghdad University (1992); an MA in Arabic Studies from Sofia University (1994), and a PhD in History from Sofia University (1998). Doctor of philological sciences (2015). Associate professor since 2003. Full professor since 2017. 

Member of Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI) since 1998.

In 2017, Prof. Pavlovich received the prestigious Book of the Year Award in Iran for his monograph Between Scripture and Canon. The Formation of the Islamic Understanding of Kalāla in the Second Century AH (718–816 CE).

Prof. Kliment Naydenov

Kliment Naydenov is a professor at the Department of Regional Development, Faculty of Geology and Geography at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Since 2016, he has been the head of the program "Regional Development and Policy" at the Faculty. Creator and head of the PhD program "Regional Development". In 2019, he was elected dean of the Faculty and was re-elected again in 2023. In the period from 2018 to 2022, he was the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Geographical Society. He is the creator of the "Geodecade 2020-2030" initiative. Prof. Naydenov is the author and co-author of over 100 publications, including books, textbooks, teaching aids and scientific articles. He participated in over 100 national, international scientific and business projects.

Since 2019, he has been a member of the Council for Regional Policy at the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works. Since 2021, he has been a member of the Regional Council for the Development of the Southwest Planning Region. In 2023, he was accepted as a member of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute in connection with his active participation in events related to the Bulgarian research program "Antarctica".