Urban Jakša is a postdoctoral researcher at ISCTE - Lisbon University Institute. Within the research project EU as a Global Actor, he explores Russia and Turkey’s challenges to EU’s foreign and security policy in the shared neighborhoods, focusing on protracted conflicts, de facto states, and the role of local actors. He recently completed his PhD in Politics at the University of York. In 2019/2020, Urban was a UN Alliance of Civilizations Fellow, in 2016/17 a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University, and in 2015 a visiting scholar at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He has gained policy experience working for NATO, OSCE, and think tanks such as the CRRC in Armenia and PISM in Poland. Urban has so far published his research in edited monographs by Routledge, Springer, and Palgrave.