Gästforskare 2013

 Dr. Paul Jordan is a postdoctoral researcher working on issues of nationalism, history, identity politics, international relations and nation branding in relation to Central and Eastern Europe. He defended his PhD thesis, The Eurovision Song Contest: Nation Branding and Nation Building in Estonia and Ukraine at the University of Glasgow in September 2011. Paul’s research interests include nation branding and nation building, nationalism and contemporary performances of national identity. He is a founding member of the Eurovision Research Network (ERN) which is an association of academics, broadcasters, journalists, and other individuals and organisations with an interest in sharing ideas, dialogue, and resources around the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). Paul is a regular pundit on the ESC for the UK media and has appeared on the BBC News, Sky News and the documentary film, The Secret History of Eurovision.

Paul is currently working with Professor Göran Bolin and Dr. Per Stahlberg from Södertorn University on a new international research project funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen), which explores the relationship and tensions between processes of nation branding and nation building in Ukraine. He is also working with Dr Nikolas Glover (postdoctoral researcher in History at Uppsala University) and Dr Louis Clerc (University of Turku) on a joint book project on public diplomacy, Seeking engagement, seeking influence: Sate-sponsored international communication in Northern Europe. He will participate in a workshop for this project whilst in Uppsala. Paul will be based at UCRS from 16 November 2013 until 13 December 2013 and will deliver a guest lecture, National assertion versus nationalism: The politics of nation branding in the post-Soviet space, on Thursday 21 November 2013.  

Leo Granberg is Professor for Rural Studies in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki. He is also Scholar in the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies “Choices of Russian Modernisation”, (University of Helsinki). He has made field research in Russian countryside and small towns since 2002 and now his research focus is on possibilities and forms of social change in ‘Second Russia’. He has co-edited among others books “Sakha Ynaga – Cattle of the Yakuts” (Granberg et al. 2009), Reflecting Transformation in Post-Socialist Rural Areas (Heinonen et al. 2007), Green Ring (Granberg et al. 2001) and Snowbelt, studies on the European north in transition. (Granberg 1998). Leo Granberg is staying at the UCRS between 1-30 November, 2013 and will be working on a book on local development in Russia, to be co-written with Ann-Mari Sätre.
 

Alexander Osipov is a senior research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues (Flensburg, Germany). Previously he worked in Russia in the Academy of Sciences, Centre for Independent Social Research and the Memorial Society. His disciplinary backgrounds are history, sociology and law; the research interests include ethnic and racial discrimination, non-territorial autonomy and models of diversity policies. His list of recent publications includes “Soviet Parity of Nations or Western non-discrimination: is there a Dilemma for Russia?”, in Karl Cordell, Timofey Agarin, Alexander Osipov (eds), Institutional Legacies of Communism – Change and Continuities in Minority Protection (Routledge, New York, NY: 2013) and “Non-Territorial Autonomy as a Way to Frame Diversity Policies: The Case of Russia”, in Ephraim Nimni, Alexander Osipov, David J. Smith (eds), The Challenge of Non-Territorial Autonomy: Theory and Practice (Peter Lang, Oxford and Bern, 2013). He is currently working on communist institutional legacies in diversity management in the EU Eastern neighbourhood. While at the UCRS, Alexander Osipov will be working on an article on the shifts in the Soviet nationalities policy of late 1980s, a working paper on diversity policies in Transnistrian region of Moldova as well as on networking and fundraising for future projects concerning diversity policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Dr. Osipov stays at the UCRS between 14 October and 4 November 2013.

Lina Klymenko holds a Ph.D. degree in Political Science from the University of Vienna, Austria. Currently she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. She has taught courses on transition to democracy and authoritarianism in post-soviet countries, Ukrainian foreign policy and EU’s Eastern frontiers. Her research interests include political culture and democratization in post-soviet countries, politics of memory and national identity, EU Eastern Partnership, and teaching and learning politics. Her research paper entitled “World War II in Ukrainian School History Textbooks: Mapping the Discourse of the Past” has been just published in “Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education”. Lina is staying at the UCRS between 7-31 October, 2013. While in Uppsala, Lina will be working on a research paper studying historical consciousness in Ukraine. 

 

Philip Hanson is an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, London and an Emeritus Professor of the Political Economy of Russia and Eastern Europe at the University of Birmingham. His books include an economic history of the USSR from 1945-91 and a study of patterns of regional economic change in Russia. His articles have appeared in Eurasian Geography and Economics, Europe-Asia Studies, International Affairs, Energy Economist and elsewhere. Past appointments have been at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK, the UN Economic Commission for Europe, Radio Liberty and Michigan, Harvard, Kyoto and Södertörns universities. He is currently working on contemporary Russian economic policy and business-state relations in Russia. Professor Hanson is staying at the UCRS 1-31 October 2013. While at the UCRS Professor Hanson will be working on a paper, to be co-authored by Stephen Fortescue, of the drivers of outward foreign direct investment by Russian steel companies.  

 Victoria Vasilenko is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary History and International Relations in the Department of World History and International Area Studies at Belgorod National Research University (BelSU), Russia. She is also a Managing Editor of the journal project Tractus Aevorum: Evolution of Sociocultural and Political Spaces which is being developed by BelSU and Middle Tennessee State University. Her research interests include Russia-EU and in particular Russian-Polish relations, Russia`s conduct in the region of CIS; the Polish question and Polish-Czechoslovak relations in WWII. Victoria is staying at UCRS between 23 September and 17 December 2013 with support of a Sverker Astrom Foundation scholarship. Her research project at the Center deals with Russia`s ‘soft power’ in the region of CIS in Russian and Polish official and expert discourses.   
 

Heikki Koskinen is doctoral student in School of Communication, Media and Theater at Tampere University. Koskinen is preparing a doctoral work on historical meanings of Soviet Union in Finnish opinion articles. Research areas connected to the doctoral study are Finnish-Soviet relations, the use of history in journalism and analogies and metaphors of Soviet Union. In previous studies Koskinen has been concentrating on American Russian journalism in the 1990`s and on Western perceptions of Russia. He has also studied in Alexander Institute in Helsinki University, St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance and in The Herzen Pedagogical University. Koskinen is visiting doctoral researcher at the UCRS between 15 September and 30 November, 2013.  During his stay at the UCRS he will complete one part of his doctoral thesis entitled "Internationalization and networking". 
 

Anna Varfolomeevareceived her Masters Degree degree (2012) from Central European University in Budapest, Department of Nationalism Studies. Her Masters thesis was devoted to the evolution of the concept of indigenous people in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation with the case study of Vepses, a small ethnic minority residing in the North-West of Russia. Currently she is researching on the state policies of Sweden towards its indigenous population in comparison with Russia. Anna is specifically focused on the topics of indigenous land rights and self-determination in the Northern Europe and Russia as well as indigenous youth organizations and their activities. She took part in several European conferences on minority rights and youth policies and had an internship in event organization at a youth NGO in Slovenia. Anna is staying at the UCRS between September 2, 2013 and January 9, 2014 as a holder of Sverker Åstrom Scholarship for the Furtherance of Swedish-Russian Relations. The research stay at UCRS will be followed by the fieldwork in Jokkmokk.   
 

Michael Gorham (Ph.D., Stanford U.) is an Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Florida, and Associate Editor of The Russian Review and Russian Language Journal. His book Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003) received Choice Magazine’s ‘Outstanding Academic Book’ award and the 2004 AATSEEL award for ‘Best Book in Literary and Cultural Studies.’ His second book, After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics from Glasnost to Putin (forthcoming, Cornell University Press) offers the first book-length cultural history of the Russian language since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorham is also co-editor of a collected volume called Digital Russia: The Language, Culture, and Politics of New Media Communication (forthcoming, Routledge Press)—the culmination of a three-year international working group he has been involved in dedicated to “The Future of Russian: Language Culture in the Era of New Technology” and sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council (http://www.uib.no/rg/future_r). Gorham has receive a year-long fellowship for 2013–2014 from American Council of Learned Societies to work on a new book project, “Russia’s Digital Revolution: Language, New Media, and the (Un)making of Civil Society,” which will be at the center of his attention while at the UCRS.  

Oleg Budnitskii is Professor of History and Director, Center for the History and Sociology of World War II at the National Research University Higher School of Economics; he is also senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the editorial board of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the annual Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii (Archive of Jewish History) and author or editor of over 200 publications (including 18 books) on the history of Russia and Russian Jewry in the second half of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. His major books are Russian Jews between the Reds and the Whites, 1917–1920 (2012, translation of the Russian edition of 2005), Den´gi russkoi emigratsii: Kolchakovskoe zoloto, 1918–1957 (The Money of the Russian Emigration: Kolchak’s Gold, 1918–57 [2008]); and Terrorism v rossiiskom osvoboditel´nom dvizhenii: Ideologiia, etika, psikhologiia (vtoraia polovina XIX–nachalo XX v.) (Terrorism in the Russian Liberation Movement: Ideology, Ethics, Psychology [Second Half of the Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Centuries] [2000]). He received grants and fellowships from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Fulbright Program, IREX, American Council of Learned Societies, Open Society Institute, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, etc.

Slawomir Kapralski is a professor of sociology in the Center for Social Studies at the Graduate School for Social Research, Warsaw and a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on nationalism, ethnicity and identity, collective memory, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and the Roma communities in Europe. He has published, among others, in the journals History & Memory, Nations & Nationalism, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. His most recent book, published in 2012 in Polish (English title: A Nation from the Ashes. Memory of Genocide and Roma Identity) examines the consequences of the Holocaust for Roma and is based on research conducted in eleven countries of East-Central Europe. In 2011 he has co-authored a book Roma in Auschwitz, published (in English) by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. He is a member of the Gypsy Lore Society, European Association for Holocaust Studies, and European Academic Network on Romani Studies. During his time at UCRS (May 2 – June 2, 2013) he will be working on the English version of his most recent book. Other projects in which he is recently involved include “Polish Sites of Memory” and (as coordinator) “Women in Roma Political Movement and NGOs in Poland and Slovakia.”  

Boris Mezhuev is an Assistant Professor of History of Russian Philosophy at the Moscow State University. In his PhD thesis he explores the social-cultural context of the 1870-s with the special emphasis on the early period of philosophy by Wladimir Soloviev. He describes the discussion of advocates of European Enlightenment in Russia with their opponents and identifies the position by Wl. Soloviev in this argument. Currently Boris Mezhuev is working on two projects – a paper about the last period of Wl. Soloviev, of the contradictions between his liberal political views and his philosophical rejection of Modernity, and a book dealing with the hidden nostalgia of perestroika in contemporary Russia. He has authored over 200 publications and his latest book is entitled “The political critique by Vadim Tsymbuirski” (2011). Boris Mezhuev is the editor-in-chief of the internet-based resource Terra America and a regular columnist of “Izvestia” newspaper. Boris is staying at the UCRS between April 2 and May 1 . During his stay at the Centre Boris will continue working on his two projects and will hold a seminar entitled  "Rejecrion of Modernity in the Russian Philosophy of the XIX-th century" on the 16th of April.

 Elizaveta Navoschik is a PhD student of the Department of International Relations at Belarusian State University. Her research interests include foreign policy, defense policy, history, economics, cultural studies of Belar us and its connections with the EU and the Baltic Sea region, especially issues of bilateral relations between Belarus and Sweden. She is currently working on her dissertation, “Swedish–Belarusian relations hips in 1992–2014”. Elizaveta held an internship at Foreign Policy and Security Research Center (Minsk) working on Belarus–NATO cooperation. In this capacity she has taken part in conferences, and was included in a special delegation of Belarusian experts that in 2009 visited NATO Headquarters in Brussels and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Mons. Besides, she has work experience as a broadcast journalist covering international politics and defense issues. Elizaveta will be visiting UCRS between January 10 and February 15, 2013. During her time here she will work under the supervision of Matthew Kott to collect material for her PhD thesis, and will make a seminar presentation based on some of her findings.

Lyudmila Igumnova is an Associate Professor at Department of World History and International Relations, Irkutsk State University (Russia), where she heads Fernand Braudel Center for International and European Studies. Her research interests include Russia-EU relations, normative policy of the European Union in Russia, EU’s image in Russia. Her present research project explores Normative Power Europe in the context of Russia-EU relations, and in particular Russia’s perception of EU’s policy of norm diffusion. Lyudmila have been awarded a Swedish Institute scholarship within the Visby Program. She presented her work at the UCRS seminar series. Lyudmila is staying at the UCRS between January 5 and June 30, 2013.    

Nino Kemoklidze is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES), The University of Birmingham. She is working on the issues concerning nationalism and ethnic violence in Georgia focusing on the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The working title of her PhD dissertation is Identity Construction and Ethno-National Violence in Georgia in the Early 1990s. She holds MA degree in International Relations with Peace and Conflict Studies specialisation from The Australian National University (2008) and MSc degree in Nationalism Studies from The University of Edinburgh (2006). She has recently guest-edited Special Issue on Many Faces of the Caucasus for Europe-Asia Studies and has co-authored an introductory chapter for the Issue: Kemoklidze, Nino et al (2012) “Many Faces of the Caucasus”, Europe-Asia Studies, 64(9): 1619-1632. Among her other publications is an article entitled “The Kosovo Precedent and the ‘Moral Hazard’ of Secession”, The Journal of International Law and International Relations, 2009, 5(2): 117-140. Nino is visiting UCRS from January 1 till December 31, 2013 as part of the Swedish Institute’s Visby Program for PhD studies. During her time at the Centre she will continue working on her PhD dissertation under the supervision of Professor Li Bennich-Björkman. Besides, she will present some of her research findings at the UCRS weekly seminars series.

Leonid Polishchuk is an Economics Professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia), where he heads the Laboratory of Applied Studies of Institutions and Social Capital. His research interests include political economy, institutional reform, and the role of culture, social networks and norms in economic development, political processes, and government performance. His present and recently completed research projects deal with Russian institutional performance; the role of social capital in government accountability and public service delivery; economics of post-secondary education and the impact of institutions on the allocation of talent; historical roots of norms and values in the Russian society; self-organization of urban and rural communities; and the role of political institutions for property rights protection. At UCRS Leonid Polishchuk is working on a collaborative project that explores social, economic and cultural factors affecting political collective action in Russia. His another project deals with the interplay between civic culture and the capacity for grassroots self-organization, and the impact of these traits for the quality of governance and economic welfare. He will present this work at the UCRS seminar series as well as at international public events organized by the UCRS. Leonid is staying at the UCRS between September 15 and January 31, 2012.