Currently, Shota is working on his PhD paper at the University of U.C. Berkley, faculty of Russian landguage and literature.  Shota has held administrative positions at the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center and the DePaul University Cultural Center. From 2007, he has been lecturing at various academic institutions from U.C. Berkeley to Ilia State University, Tbilisi, where he has also been the editor of the English language journal Identity Studies in the South Caucasus and the Black Sea Region. He worked for the South Caucasus Regional Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation during 2016 as a Coordinator of Democratic Political Culture and Regional and International Dialogue Programmes.

Shota Papava studied International Relations at American University, Washington D.C., Philosophy of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and Philology at the University of California, Berkeley.