Claudia Laštro is a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies and an editor at Contemporary Southeastern Europe. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Graz and has previously worked as a research associate at the Southeast Europe Association and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Her research focuses on elite dynamics in authoritarian regimes in the Western Balkans and the South Caucasus, and has been recognised with multiple dissertation awards. From 2025 until 2026, she acted as primary researcher in the Folke Bernadotte Academy-funded project “Understanding coalition building in ‘soft’ authoritarianisms: A comparative analysis of the Western Balkans and the Caucasus”. She has published in outlets including European Political Science, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, and Comparative Southeast European Studies.