She holds her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Khalvashi’s research has covered a wide spectrum of anthropological themes, ranging from nationalist cosmologies, Muslim and Christian religious conversions, forms of marginality in transitional economies, and global ramifications of Georgia’s recent neoliberal urban transformation. Drawing on richly detailed ethnographic research in the Georgian Black Sea city of Batumi, she is currently writing a book onoptimism, debt and speculations about the future in the context of dramatic urban restructuring wrought by postsocialist revolutions and political change.