Robert F. Byrnes
Russian and East European Institute

Martin Blackwell (PhD 2005, History) recently visited Kyiv to present his monograph Kyiv as Regime City: The Return of Soviet Power after Nazi Occupation ​(2016, University of Rochester Press). He is currently Visiting Professor of History at Stetson University.

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Stephen F Cohen (BA 1960, Business Economics and Public Policy; MA 1962, Government). See the news story for more!

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Joe Crescente, (MA 2007, REEI) is Media Literacy Fellow at the American Center at the US Embassy in Moscow.

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Elena Doludenko (PhD 2017, Slavic) is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at University of Missouri at Columbia.

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Geoffrey Durham (MA 2016, REEI), currently a doctoral student in history at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named an ASEEES 2019 Stephen F. Cohen-Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Fellow.

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Kat Hodgson (MA 2010, REEI), is a doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Peace Studies at the Arctic University of Norway.

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Constanze Kolbe (PhD 2017, History) has won the John O. Iatrides Dissertation Prize for 2019 for her dissertation Crossing Regions, Nations, Empires. The Jews of Corfu and the Making of a Jewish Adriatic, 1850-1914.

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Jill Massino (PhD 2010, History) has published Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania (2019, Berghan), an analysis of the interplay between gender and citizenship in postwar Romania that focuses on youth, family, work, and consumption. Juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, the work illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and the ways in which women negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. It concludes with an exploration of the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.

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Joanna Matuszak (PhD 2017, Fine Arts-Art History) has been appointed Lecturer of Art History at Southern Utah University.

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Madeline McCann (MA 2019, REEI) received a 2019 research grant from ASEEES for her project Exploring Grassroots Civic Engagement in Modern Russia. She is currently working as a researcher in Saint Petersburg, Russia for the Bellona Foundation, ​ which aims to "to meet and fight the climate challenges, by identifying and implementing sustainable environmental solutions." 

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Timothy Model (PhD 2019, Political Science) has been named a Havighurst Fellow at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies of Miami University for 2019-2020. He recently published Trump's Ukraine scandal doesn't mean U.S. politics are corrupt. Saying so can be dangerous for NBC News.

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Leone Musgrave (PhD 2017, History) was a research fellow at the Institute of History and International Relations at Southern Federal University on Rostov-on-Don in 2018-2019.

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Alexander Rabinowitch (REEI Certificate 1963; PhD 1965, History). See the news story for more!

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Elizabeth Lee Roby (MA 1997, Slavic) served as presenter for Russian 2019 Workshop for Teachers of Russian as a World Language, held on July 15-17 at Portland State University in Portland, OR.

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Michelle Schulte (MA (REEI)/MLS 2019) has received a Fulbright grant to teach in Ukhta, Russia in 2019-2020.

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Elizabeth Skomp (BA 1998, Comparative Literature/Slavic, REEI certificate)​ has been named Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Stetson University, where she is Professor of Russian.

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Benjamin Stellwagen (PhD 2019, History) is serving as Director of Dual Credit Programs at Concordia University in Seward, NE.

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Lisa Cooper Vest (PhD 2014, Musicology) is Assistant Professor at the Thornton School of Music at University of Southern California (USC). In March, 2019 she presented "Hearing Voices in Santa Fe: The Sonic Implications of Possession in Help! Help! The Globolinks! and The Devils of Loudun" at the 45^th Annual Conference of the Society for American Music in New Orleans. She was the invited Paderewski Lecturer at the USC Polish Music Center's 2018 concert, celebrating 100 years of Polish national independence. At the USC Honors Convocation in spring 2019, Vest received the Dean's Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching.

REEI Alums in the Former Soviet Union

Joe Crescente (MA 2007, REEI) - Over the years I have gotten a lot of mileage out of my REEI degree. Immediately after receiving my diploma I headed to Vladivostok, Russia where I worked in secondary schools programming for American Councils for International Education. I later worked for this organization in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan and Moscow, where I was promoted to Hub Director for the FLEX program in Central Russia, the Urals, and Siberia. For more than a decade I worked as a translator and editor specializing in Russian-related content for clients including the Higher School of Economics, Danish and Swedish Association of Journalists, Regional Press Institute, Fort Ross Dialogue, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, and Nuffic Neso Russia, as well as in the natural resources sector and for private clients. I currently serve as the Media Literacy Fellow at the American Center in Moscow, where I offer trainings and seminars, have hosted a podcast, and am in the process of designing an eight-part Russian-language online course, all on topics related to media literacy. I also recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing Fiction at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where I wrote a novel. The novel, which is largely set in Russia, is complete and I am beginning the process of sending it out to agents. Look for it (hopefully) soon!

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Madeline McCann (MA 2019, REEI) - I'm currently in Saint Petersburg on an internship as a researcher with Bellona, an international environmental NGO based in Oslo (Norway) with offices in Russia (as well as in Belgium and the US). The internship is part of my project “Exploring Grassroots Civic Engagement in Modern Russia,” which is supported through a Civil Society in Russia Research Grant from ASEEES. My REEI degree was definitely helpful in giving me the language skills and general background necessary to be here, and I actually found the internship through a connection I made at IU with a visiting scholar. After this, I will work at George Washington University in the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS) in a position that I also found through an REEI connection (Regina Smyth, Associate Professor of Political Science). I haven't been graduated long but so far I'd say my time at IU's REEI has been very helpful for me in regards to everything I've done since graduation!

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Austin Wilson (BA 2013, History; MA 2019, REEI) - I am an American Councils FLEX program participant recruiter based in Kyiv and Riga, where I am meeting with young people to help select candidates for a year of academic and cultural exchange in the United States. My REEI education has helped me settle in on my first tour of the region and in the office and most importantly, to continue learning about a fascinating place in interesting times.