On April 30, 2018, Dr. Yasya Babych (ISET/MPRC) presented at the Georgian Banking Forum 2018 organized by The Financial. The conference was dedicated to the future of banking and took place at the Biltmore Hotel in Tbilisi. Among the invited speakers were Irakli Kovzanadze (Chairman of Finance and Budget Committee of the Parliament of Georgia), Murtaz Kikoria (Vice-Governor, Member of the Board of the National Bank of Georgia), Andras Hemberger(Mastercard), Kakha Kiknavelize (CEO of Bank of Georgia) and other notables.

Back in 1991, I attended a big “Does Socialism Have a Future?” conference hosted by my alma mater, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The session I remember most vividly featured a Hungarian dissident, a poet, ridiculing ineffective communist propaganda. “Communists”, he told a sympathetic audience, “tried to convince us that jeans can cause impotence in young males and that Coca Cola is bad for people’s health”.

Tsotne Marghia, of the Class 2018, decided to apply for an MA research scholarship at the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, following in the footsteps of another ISET student last year. Tsotne succeeded in being granted the scholarship, allowing him to purchase the necessary books and papers, as well as having the opportunity to attend conferences abroad.

Yasya Babych of the ISET Policy Institute was a guest speaker at an annual think-tank conference in Kyiv, Ukraine organized by the International Renaissance Foundation and the Embassy of Sweden. She shared the experience of ISET-PI as the first university-based economic policy think tank in the South Caucasus.

ISET Policy Institute’s executive director, Lasha Labadze, attended the Vision Europe Summit (VES) "WINNERS AND LOSERS OF GLOBALISATION" which took place on 14 and 15 November 2017 in Turin. Launched in January 2015, Vision Europe is a joint project of leading European foundations and think tanks, who work together to investigate and debate matters, with the aim of informing and influencing policymakers and public opinion on some of the most pressing public policy challenges Europe faces today.