Connor O’Kelley is a second-year student at CERES whose primary academic interests center on Russia’s current and historical relations with the Black Sea region, including Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. Originally from Suwanee, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the George Washington University, with a major in International Affairs and a minor in Russian. From 2022 to 2025, he worked as an analyst at the Center for the Study of Democracy, a think tank in Sofia, Bulgaria, before returning to Washington in August 2025 to begin his studies at Georgetown.
Throughout his undergrad career at GWU, Connor held several internships in think tanks and government, including at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, the German Marshall Fund, and the State Department’s EUR Bureau. In spring 2026, he worked as a Kampelman Policy Fellow at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, and in summer 2026, he participated in an intensive Ukrainian language program in Chisinau, Moldova through American Councils. He has also previously studied abroad in Prague, Czechia in 2018, and Irkutsk, Russia in 2019. As he begins his third semester at CERES, he is continuing to study Ukrainian at the intermediate level, along with working towards a Graduate Certificate in Diplomatic Studies. He maintains advanced Russian language proficiency, and is also interested in researching Russian cyber and information warfare. After graduating from Georgetown, he hopes to apply his language skills and regional expertise working to bolster the Black Sea region’s resilience against malign Russian influence and help Ukraine integrate into the Euro-Atlantic community.