Visiting Scholars 2009-10

2009-10 CREEES Eurasian Studies Visiting Scholar

Şuhnaz Yilmaz is Associate Professor of International Relations at Koc University, Istanbul. While at Stanford from September 2009 - June 2010, she will conduct research on the project "Struggle for Natural Resources: Politics of Oil and Water in Eurasia and the Middle East." Click here for abstract>

Professor Yilmaz holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies. Her areas of interest and expertise include foreign policy analysis, Turkish foreign policy, Turkish-American Relations, Eurasian Politics, Energy Politics, Mediterranean cooperation and security, European Union Foreign and Security Policy, and international development. Her forthcoming book Turkish-American Relations (1800-1952): Between the Stars, Stripes, and Crescent will be published by the Routledge Press International Studies Series. She is the director of the foreign policy unit of Center for the Globalization and Democratic Governance (GLODEM). Professor Yilmaz received the Sakip Sabanci International Research Award in 2007, the Distinguished Young Scientist Award of the Turkish Academy of Sciences in 2008, and a Turkish Science and Research Council grant in 2009.

Fulbright Research Fellow in Residence at CREEES, 2009-10

Svetlana Suveica is a Fulbright research fellow from Moldova. While in residence at CREEES from October 2009 to February 2010, Suveica will conduct research on the significance of the Bessarabian question at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the the contribution of A. N. Krupenski, the former Marshal of the Bessarabian nobility, to the negotiations. Click here for research abstract>

Svetlana Suveica is Associate Professor of Romanian History at the State University of Moldova, Chisinau, where she has been on the faculty since 1996 and teaches courses on Romanian politics and history. Since 2004, Prof. Suveica has also lectured at the American Studies Center in Moldova. She published a monograph on Bessarabian modernization in the interwar period in 2009.

Chopivsky Fellow in Ukrainian Studies, 2009-10

Olena Bogdanova is the Chopivsky Fellow in Ukrainian Studies for 2009-10. While in residency at CREEES from January to April 2010, she will work on the project "From Choosing What to Believe in, to Cooperation and Initiative: the Under-Explored Path." Click here for abstract>

An expert in the sociology of religion, civic activism and community development in Ukraine, Bogdanova holds a PhD in Sociology from "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy." She is the author of several academic articles, including "Factors of Passivity in Asserting One's Rights by Ukrainian Citizens: Research Results and Suggestions for Ukraine's Democratic Future" (2007), "Can Religion Be Conducive to Democracy" (2007), and "Conceptualizing Democracy in Social Research" (2006).

CREEES Visiting Scholar Masha Kowell

Masha Kowell is a Ph.D. Candidate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation examines the processes of cutting, both metaphorical and literal, in Russian avant-garde film and art set against the backdrop of the radical politics in the aftermath of the October Revolution. She has presented a number of papers in the United States and abroad on Russian and Soviet art and film. In Spring 2008, she co-curated the “Power Fields: Explorations in the Works of Vito Acconci,” a retrospective exhibition held at Slought Foundation, Philadelphia. She is currently researching the work of Soviet avant-garde filmmaker Esther Shub and the documentary travel films of Vladimir Erofeev. Ms. Kowell has served as a lecturer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In March 2009, she represented the University of Pennsylvania at the Annual Mid-Atlantic Symposium on the History of Art. She has published a translation of classified materials authored by KGB chief Yuri Andropov. She is co-curator of the exhibition Laughing Matters: Soviet Propaganda in Khruschev’s Thaw, 1956-1964 at the Arthur Ross Gallery on the Penn campus.

CREEES Visiting Scholar Scott Littlefield

Scott Littlefield will be a visiting scholar at CREEES until January 2010. While at CREEES Scott plans to finish writing up his doctoral thesis “The Identity Politics of Energy Policy: Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union, 2000-2008” from the University of Cambridge and continue work on post-Soviet Russian nationalism.

Scott received his BA in economics and English from the University of Michigan in 2003 and an MA in international policy studies from Stanford in 2005. His research interests include natural resource politics (especially energy), nationalism, Russian foreign and defense policy, and economic development/innovation. Since 2008, Scott has co-compiled and edited the bi-weekly Russian Nationalism Bulletin. He also works with the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation.

Previous Visiting Scholars

Kateryna Dysa was the Chopivsky Scholar for 2008-09. She is a faculty member in the History Department and the Center for Polish and European Studies at the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy". Her book Witches and Others: Witchcraft Trials in the Ukrainian Palatinates of Rzeczpospolita in the 17th - 18th Centuries was published in 2008.
Amelia Glaser is Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at the University of California at San Diego. She is the editor and award-winning translator of "Proletpen: America's Rebel Yiddish Poets" (U. Of Pennsylvania, 2005).
  Akbar Ismanjanov is a visiting fellow through the Open Society Institute Network Scholarship Program. He teaches Civil Law subjects at Kyrgyz-Uzbek University in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. His research focus on information, telecommunications and internet law
Volodymyr Kulyk, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, spent winter quarter at Stanford to teach a course on “Politics of Identity in Eastern Europe.”
Alma Kunanbaeva teaches "Nomads of Eurasia: Culture in Transition" and "Folklore, Mythology, and Islam in Central Asia" in the Stanford Anthropology Department in 2009 and teaches Kazakh and Uzbek with the Stanford Special Languages Program in 2008-09. She curates and hosts the CREEES Central Asian Film Series in 2009, while continuing her community work as the director of the Silk Road House in Berkeley.
Pavlo Kutuyev is Professor of Sociology at Mykhaylo Drahomanov National Pedagogic University in Kiev and was the Chopivsky Fellow in Spring 2008. He is currently working on a project in comparative history and sociology entitled "Comparative-Historical Perspectives on Ukrainian State Building." His research focuses on state-making and developmental state-building.
Iryna Lukyanenko was the 2006 Chopivsky Fellow at CREEES . She is Chief of the Department of Finance, and Deputy Dean of the Department of Economics at University of Kyiv Mohylla Academy.
Eugene Mazo was Visiting Researcher at CREEES for winter and spring 2007. Gene holds a J.D. from Stanford, an M.A. in Russian Studies from Harvard, and is completing his doctoral thesis working with Archie Brown and Oxford University.
  Abdul Ghaffar Mughal is a Visiting Scholar at CREEES this year. An economist specializing in Central Asia and South Asia, His geographical area of interest is the emerging economies, particularly in the Muslim world. He has just completed a major UNDP/IOM sponsored research project on remittances and living standards in Tajikistan.Dr. Mughal teaches at California State University at Hayward
Klaus Segbers is Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universitat of Berlin and CREEES visiting scholar in Winter 2008. Professor Segbers conducts research on a range of topics involving contemporary Europe: Germany's foreign relations with Eastern European countries, the impact of EU enlargement, and area studies as practiced in academic settings.
Volha Shatalava is affiliated with the History Faculty and Department of Ethnology and Art History at the Belarusian State University. She was a a visiting NCEEER Carnegie scholar at CREEES for Fall 2007. She continues to work on her research project "Belarusian and Ukrainian Post-Soviet Nations: Two Versions of Nation-Building."
  Anton Shynkaruk is affiliated with the Rivne Institute of Slavonic Studies in Kiev and was the NCEEER Carnegie scholar at CREEES for Winter 2008. His research analyzes crisis communications in the modern foreign policy of Ukraine.
Florin Sperlea is a historian from Romania and CREEES visiting scholar for 2007-08. He holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary History and studies East European military history during the Soviet era.
Alexey Timofeychev is a doctoral student at the Institute for Political and Sociological Studies in Warsaw, where he is writing on elite politics in Russia's regions, with a focus on Kaliningrad. He was an NCEEER Carnegie Fellow at CREEES for Winter 2007.
Izaly Zemtsovsky, an ethnomusicologist and folklorist who specializes in the cultures of Eurasia, has retired from teaching but continues to stay active in writing and research. He will facilitate the "Sounds of Eurasia" performance series at Stanford University in 2008-09.