Lena Raballand
Research Fellow
Lena Raballand is a Doctoral student at The Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex. Her research is focused on the use of political financing to state capture with a case study of South Africa under President Zuma.
Previously, she gained experience in the anti-corruption field through interning within the OECD’s Anti-Corruption Division in Paris. She also spent six months as an intern within the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s ‘Container Control’ Project focused on illicit trafficking in the Black Sea and the South Caucasus region in Kiev, Ukraine. She holds an MA in International Security Studies from the University of Reading and a Bachelor of Laws from King’s College London. During her Bachelor’s, she studied abroad at the Université Panthéon-Assas. Lena has also spent time in Moscow. In 2019, she completed a course on Russian Foreign Policy and its modern challenges at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in Moscow. In 2018, she attended the Higher School of Economics in Moscow’s course on the European Union and Russia’s future.
Her areas of interest include state capture, political financing, illicit markets, and international security.
Outside of academia, Lena enjoys traveling, running and Formula One.
Languages: French, English, Russian, Spanish
Father, Son and the House of Panzeri: A network map of ‘Eurogate’ corruption
In December 2022, an EU corruption scandal dubbed “Qatargate” exploded following findings from the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office. However, while the origin of the scandal’s name is unclear, the sole focus on Qatar begs reflection.
Italian Political Financing: How Meloni paid her way
Politics is expensive, and whose money a party will accept has consequences. Italy is only one of two European Union Member States in which no public funding is available to any party. In consequence, this forces Italian parties to scrap for funds wherever they can.
What is the European Union trying to achieve with Strategic Autonomy and is it feasible?
With tensions and risk of armed conflict growing day by day between Russia and the West, it’s well time for the European Union to establish how it would defend its territory and citizens in an eventual armed conflict.
Introduction to the European Union’s Projects in the Horn of Africa
Evaluating the success of the EU’s projects in the region suggests that while the European Union contributes broad efforts to provide aid in the Horn of Africa in a vast number of sectors such as education, employment and infrastructure, making progress in this region of instability and conflict is difficult.
The EU-Russia Relationship: Understanding the Russian perspective
Russia and the European Union’s relationship continues to be tested since the relational breakdown in 2008 and 2014. Yet, Russia must not be written off as the EU has the opportunity to revive the dialogue with Moscow in recognising the deep historical and cultural ties between Europe and Russia.