Laura Mafizzoli is a social anthropologist specializing in the Caucasus and the Balkans, focusing on memory activism, commemorations, and the politics of difficult heritage. She holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, where she researched Gulag memorialization practices in Tbilisi. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, working on the ERC-funded project MEMPOP: Memory and Populism from Below, for which she explores memory and populism in Istria and Georgia.