Tim Borden (PhD, History, 1999) earned a Master’s Degree in Security Studies from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA in September 2019. His thesis explored responses to the global war on terrorism during the last decade in Poland. Specifically, it examined how visions of the country’s nationhood have been used by the leaders of the country’s dominant political party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS), in conjunction with real or imagined terrorist events to gain power and further its political agenda. In his day job, Tim was recently appointed as the Chief of the Contraband Enforcement Unit for U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Chicago-O’Hare International Airport. In addition to executing criminal warrants, his team is responsible for intercepting prohibited items (narcotics, counterfeit goods, and undeclared currency and merchandise) upon entry and exit from the United States. Tim came to Chicago after serving for several years with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Immigration Advisory Program in London, England.

Choi Chatterjee (PhD, 1995, History) is co-editor (together with Steven Marks, Mary Neuberger and Steve Sabol) of The Global Impacts Of Russia's Great War and Revolution, Book 2: The Wider Arc Of Revolution, Parts 1 And 2 (Slavica, 2019). For Part 1, she wrote the introduction and contributed the article “Lady in Red. Russian Revolutionary Language in the American Imagination, 1917-1939.” She has also published “Accidental Transnationalist: An Autobiographical Manifesto” in Ab Imperio (4/2018).

Clare Angeroth Franks (MA, 2019, REEI) has been serving as Curriculum Coordinator at REEI since August, 2019 and as Administrative Assistant for the consortium of REEI, the Inner Asian Uralic and National Resource Center, and the Institute for European Studies since January 2020. She is also the recipient of a grant from the 2020 ASEEES Internship Program.

Peter Jensen (MA, 2014, REEI) is Education and Outreach Coordinator at Oberlin Community Services in Oberlin, Ohio.​​

Shoshana Keller (PhD 1995, History) has published Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Convergence with the University of Toronto Press. Based on the most recent scholarship in English, Russia, Uzbek, and German, the book is an accessible synthesis of over six hundred years of interactions between Slavic and Central Asia peoples across Eurasia, suitable for classes and for general readers.

Madeline McCann (MA, 2019, REEI) is Program Coordinator at the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS), based at George Washington University. In that position, she manages several annual policy conferences, assists with the publication of policy memos, and produces multimedia content, including the a new series of PONARS Eurasia Podcasts hosted by political analyst and journalist Maria Lipman, who taught at REEI as a visiting professor in 2017 and 2018 (the first installment can be found at: https://blubrry.com/ponars/59813323/putins-leap-to-eternity-lipman-series-2020/).

Tim Model (PhD, 2019, Political Science) was a featured panelist at  The Russian Power Vertical and the COVID-19 Challenge: The Trajectories of Regional Responses​, on an online panel discussion presented by PONARS Eurasia on May 22.

Anna Muller (PhD, History, 2010; MA, History, 2006) has been awarded the Oskas Halecki Polish History Award by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America for her If the Walls Could Speak: Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Madeleine Steup (BA, 2016, Russian/Comparative Literature major) completed an MA in Comparative Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Münich, Germany in 2018 and is currently employed as Digital Marketing Manager with SNOOK in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Alexandra Tipei (PhD, History, 2016) has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Montreal beginning Fall 2020.

Michael A. Young (PhD, 2016, Folklore and Ethnomusicology) has published "Hi-Fi Heritage: Recording Technology, Audio Engineering, and the Mediation of Authenticity in the Polish Revival of Traditional Music" in  Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 57, No. 1 (January-April 2020), pp. 33-72.

In Memoriam

John O. Norman (PhD, 1990, History) passed away in April, 2018 at the age of 68. Prior to his doctoral studies at IU, he earned a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of North Texas. He joined the Western Michigan University (WMU) faculty in 1989. Over the course of 27 years in WMU’s Department of History, he taught Russian and Soviet history courses as well as courses dealing with cultural history and the arts, specializing in late Tsarist fine arts. He played an instrumental role in the establishment of a doctoral program in history at WMU. An avid researcher, he mentored numerous students and taught his department's graduate-level course on historical methods and theory for more than a decade. As a founding member of the Kalamazoo-Pushkin (Russia) Partnership, he helped collect medicines and other necessities for the elderly in the difficult days of Russia's hyperinflation and also served as a liaison and interpreter for the partnership in interactions with the Kalamazoo city government, the Pushkin city government, and the Catherine Palace administration and curatorial staff.