Biography
Graduated in Political Sciences and holder of both a postgraduate degree in Political Sociology and an advanced studies degree in Population and Development Sciences from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Nicolas Gosset is the Asia/Eurasia researcher at the RHID’s Centre for Security and Defence Studies, expert on Russia, the former Soviet worlds and the Eurasian geopolitical dynamics.
After having worked for two years as an assistant in charge of practical works for the ULB’s Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (Centre de sociologie des organisations), Nicolas Gosset carried on his research activities with a grant from the Fond national de la recherche scientifique (FRS-FNRS) within the Centre d’étude de la coopération internationale et du développement (CECID) at the ULB (Institute of Sociology). Within that framework he led from October 2007 to December 2010, for his doctoral research on post-Soviet security governance transformations in Central Asia, a long-term ethnographic research work in several places of that region (in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kirghizstan, in particular), where he was a young visiting researcher first at the Institut français des études sur l’Asie centrale (IFEAC) in Tashkent, then at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan and at the Social Research Center (SRC) of the American University in Central Asia (AUCA), in Bishkek, Kirghizstan.
Backing up his research activities on a diversified collaboration practice with several international projects in the region, he collaborated among others as a field evaluator for the Regional Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project implemented in Uzbekistan by the International Secretariat for Water for the Swiss technical cooperation; as a scientific consultant in charge of community liaison matters with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) within the framework of the “Strengthening Border Control at Selected Checkpoints along the Tajik-Uzbek Border” Project aiming to support the efforts to control the border crossings that are the most exposed to drug and weapons trafficking in the Fergana Valley (Tajikistan-Uzbekistan), and as a project assistant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) within the framework of the “Initiative for Local Government Capacity-Building” led in Uzbekistan by the University of Bonn’s Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF). In Central Asia he also gained short-term observer experience within the electoral observation mission OSCE/ODHIR deployed for the Tajik parliamentary elections in September 2009.
During this period in Central Asia, Nicolas Gosset also worked as a substitute course lecturer seconded to the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED) in Tashkent by the Service de coopération et d’action culturelle (SCAC) of the French Embassy in Uzbekistan, and as a visiting researcher for the regional programme of the Centre for Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus (School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London).
After this rich research experience, Nicolas Gosset joined in 2011 the team of the RHID’s Centre for Security and Defence Studies. Since then he has covered the Asia/Eurasia geographic niche. Besides his joining the Belgian Defence, Nicolas Gosset is still an associate member of the ULB’s Centre d’études de la coopération internationale et du développement.
Having gradually extended the sphere of his research interests towards Afghan, Russian and Chinese issues, he nowadays studies more particularly the transformation of the Russian military tool and the developments in the Russian Federation’s security and defence policies. Besides he devoted many works to the polemology of the Afghan conflict and the security governance in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Nicolas Gosset is an active member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) and its European counterpart (European Society for Central Asian Studies, ESCAS), and is still strongly attached to his researches on Central Asia as area studies. He regularly collaborates as resource expert for the European Parliament’s study group on the EU’s Central Asia Strategy and for the NGO Search for Common Ground’s “Strenghtening the capacity of prevention of violent extremism in Central Asia” Programme, funded by the European Resources for Mediation Support (ERMES).
Nicolas Gosset speaks French, English and Russian. As a legacy of his research period in Central Asia, he also has a practical knowledge of the Uzbek language (Türk).