Simonida Kacarska is a research coordinator at the European Policy Institute in Skopje, Macedonia. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Leeds in the UK. She has held research positions at the Central European University, the College of Europe, University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh project The Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia. Simonida has both practitioner and research experience related to the political transformation and European integration of the Balkans, with a focus on national minority policies.