2025/26 Mladena and Dianko Sotirov Visiting Fellowship

LSE IDEAS selects next Sotirov Visiting Fellow, Dr. Schivatcheva

Dr. Schivatcheva holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, supported by a Cambridge Trust Vice-Chancellor’s Award, and a PhD in International Political Economy (IPE) from King’s College London (KCL).

Across both doctoral degrees, she has built an analytical lens that decentres state and materialist orthodoxies, conceptualising power as diffuse, relational, and embedded in structures like gender. Dr. Schivatcheva foregrounds the agency of non-state actors, especially growth-oriented entrepreneurs, as influential actors within transnational economic governance. By coupling feminist political economy with Neo-Schumpeterian innovation studies, she interrogates how entrepreneurship operates as both an economic and a political practice that can reinforce or redistribute global hierarchies.

Dr. Schivatcheva’s fellowship research focuses on Bulgaria’s biotechnology and ICT sectors - two strategic domains where EU programs, venture capital and multinational R&D subsidiaries converge. Centered on the “embodied enterprise,” the study analyses how entrepreneurial growth is shaped by founders’ gender, mobility, and institutional embeddedness.

The project contributes to debates on inclusive development and equitable economic transitions in semi-peripheral economies. It advances understanding of subnational agency in transnational technological innovation networks with broader implications for strategic-sector development, talent mobility, technological sovereignty, and science and innovation diplomacy.

Dr. Schivatcheva is a member of the EU COST Action CA22122 “Rethinking the Blue Economy: Socio-Ecological Impacts and Opportunities.” She has contributed to several EU research and policy initiatives, including the H2020-funded EURECA project, a Seventh Framework Programme project, and sustainability-focused COST Actions FP1106 and FP0801. She was previously a Manfred Heindler Research Grant Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Studies (IAS-STS) in Graz, Austria, where she researched low-carbon energy transitions.

Beyond academia, Dr. Schivatcheva supports charitable initiatives promoting education and international science exchange. Her contributions have been recognised with two King’s College London awards for service to migrant communities and international community engagement.

Professor Chris Alden, Director at LSE IDEAS, says:

We are extremely excited to have Dr. Schivatchevajoin us this year as the Sotirov fellow and are excited for the work she will produce. We are ever grateful to the Sotirov family for their generous support over the years and the value that this fellowship has brought to the think-tank.

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