CREEES MA Students

Diana Gor graduated summa cum laude from CUNY Hunter College in 2022 with a B.A. in Theater and English Literature, Language, and Criticism and a certificate in Arts Management and Leadership. As an undergraduate, she received the Vera Mowry Roberts Award for excellence in theater history and held internships at Harlem Stage, Working Theater, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Diana’s interests shifted toward Slavic Studies with a focus on Soviet censorship and artistic persecution, tamizdat and tamvydav, and Ukrainian culture and literature, as a child of Ukrainian immigrants herself. She has continued to work at the intersection of arts administration and Slavic Studies at the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Tamizdat Project, and the Ukrainian Museum in New York City. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, Diana studied history and language at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute. Her paper, “The Townspeople as the ‘Cultural Body’ of Totalitarianism in Evgeny Shvarts’ The Dragon,” which examines how the cultural norms of the townspeople carry responsibility in fueling the cyclical totalitarian regime of the play, was awarded the 2022-2023 REEESNe Marina Ledkovsky Prize for best short-form essay at the Yale MacMillan Center. At Stanford, she looks forward to improving her knowledge of Ukrainian and researching WWII-era Ukrainian Displaced Persons literature, building upon her current research on the contraband nature of the 1947 Ukrainian translation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Daniel Lehmann graduated from American University in 2021, with a double major in International Studies and Russian Language and Area Studies and a minor in History. His senior capstone focused on the history and development of national identities within Central Asia during the late 19th and early 20th century. While an undergraduate, Daniel spent time in Bishkek through Bard College’s Development and Social Change Summer Practicum and studied abroad at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University through American Council’s Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies Program. After college Daniel worked at a think tank focused on Central Asia and the South Caucasus on issues related to energy, economics, and security in Eurasia. Most recently he has worked as a Senior Threat Analyst at a global security and intelligence firm, advising clients on physical and cyber threats to their companies. During his time at Stanford, he hopes to explore the influence historical events and policies have had on modern governance and security in Eurasia.

Vahakn Manoogian graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Central Florida in 2024, earning a B.A. in Political Science. Throughout his undergraduate studies, Vahakn spent extensive time abroad, primarily in Armenia and Russia, engaging in academic and professional work. During that time, he grew his regional knowledge and language skills by working with governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations, and not-for-profit initiatives. Particularly impactful experiences included interning with the Government of the Republic of Armenia, conducting research with the Armenian Center for American Studies, and studying at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Vahakn recently co-authored a publication concerning the OSCE Minsk Group, the former main mediating body of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and is actively engaged in research on Sino-Russian relations in Central Asia. At Stanford, Vahakn plans to expand his research on Color Revolutions by analyzing the influence of diasporas within post-Soviet states and the role of the internet, particularly social media, as a tool for agenda-setting.

Ashley Meyer is a coterminal degree student dually completing her BA in International Relations from Stanford and the CREEES Master's program. In the course of her studies, Ashley has focused particularly on Russian interventions in information and memory spaces. Her research on Ukrainian diaspora relations during the collapse of the Soviet Union received the 2024 Galina Leytes Prize in Slavic Studies for excellence in scholarship. Ashley previously worked as a research assistant for the Baltic Security Foundation examining the security threat posed to the region by the Kaliningrad oblast. As a part of her CREEES studies, Ashley looks forward to continuing her research on the Baltics by analyzing shifts in the discourse of national identity since the 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Stella Webster graduated summa cum laude from Hillsdale College in 2024 with a major in history. At Hillsdale she was a member of the Phi Alpha Theta history honorary and the recipient of the Windsor Hall Roberts Award, conferred annually by the history department on an outstanding senior history major. As an undergraduate, her focus was on late imperial Russian intellectual and religious history; her history honors thesis explored the philosophical views of Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Antonii Khrapovitskii (1863-1936) in relation to late imperial Russian reactionary conservatism. More broadly, she is interested in the ways that people throughout history have used their political ideologies and religious beliefs to explain, control, and change the concrete realities around them. As a CREEES student at Stanford, Stella hopes to both improve her Russian language skills and explore the intersections between Russian philosophy, religion, and politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in hopes of pursuing doctoral studies and an eventual career teaching in this field of history.

Rebecca Ye graduated from Wellesley College where she double majored in Mathematics and Russian. As an undergraduate, she was an Albright Fellow and interned at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, focusing on post-Soviet Central Asia. After graduation, she spent two years working in financial technology and operations. Prior to studying at Stanford, she is spending the summer improving her Russian language comprehension as a Title VIII fellow with the Critical Language Institute in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. As a CREEES student, she hopes to study early 20th century Russian literature, the Symbolist movement and the Russian religious renaissance, examining the legacy of this period of literature on modern nationalism and culture. In her spare time, she is a figure skating judge and ice hockey player.