Fellows Research

This research brief provides an overview of recent developments in Russian forestry policy that have unfolded following the rewriting of the latest Forest Code, which was instituted in 2007. The brief contextualizes the code, giving a short background of what led to its reformulation.

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Policy Transformed: An Examination of Russia's Latest Forest Code and Its Effects on the Forestry Sector (284KB pdf)

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This research tackles the question of education quality through case studies of eight schools in Belarus. Through school visits in several regions in the country and extensive interviews with teachers, school administrators, and students, my work offers an inside perspective on the education system in Belarus and a glimpse into the Belarusian centralized bureaucracy. This report provides an overview of the education system, including the curriculum, the pedagogy, and the perceptions of quality and shifts toward modernization of all who are involved in the education process.

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Teachers, Students, and Administrators Speak About Secondary Education in Belarus (282KB pdf)

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Deploying the Discourse of Motherhood: Parents of Children with Disabilities and Advances in Civic Lobbying and Third Sector Politics in the New Russia

Engendering Czech Healthcare Migration: How migration activities increase women's agency in global labor markets

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This project examines how judges and police deal with women’s rights cases in the post-Soviet world. More specifically, it explores why judges and police violate authoritarian legal codes to support some rights, and yet suppress others despite lenient state policies. The researcher argues that judges and police rule/act against the laws of an authoritarian state in accordance to their values of justice, which reflect public norms in a given country.

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WILSON Summary.pdf

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Although state, academic, and media discourses have paid more attention to other important varieties of crisis in Russia, recently demographers have described the changes in Russian family life since the mid-1990s as a “quiet revolution.” This “quiet revolution” in family life is closely connected to what this research identifies as Russia’s gender crisis, or as most Russians call it, the “problem with men.” Through understanding the normalization of single motherhood in Russia as an unfortunate fact of the status quo and by taking the &ldquo

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UTRATA Summary.pdf

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This project is an analysis of prominent semi-dissident Russian male societies, whose main features are self-mockery, parody, a certain level debauchery (drinking, eating, smoking, laziness, etc.) and the extolment of these practices and values in their literary writings. At the same time, it is shown that the groups also exhibit a number of aspects of Orthodox Christian ethics, including pity for others, asceticism, humility, self-deprecation, and protecting those who are weaker.

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SANDALSKA Summary.pdf

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This presentation draws on research conducted into the files of the Committee for Soviet Women (CSW) as well as the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) in order to investigate how the Soviet Union – a repressive totalitarian state in some ways, but also one with progressive policies towards women, at least in the Asian context – sought to integrate Afghan women into Second World institutions and feminist practices. A focus on women, while relevant to current American concerns about South Asia, also speaks to research agendas in current historical scholarship.

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NUNAN Research Summary.pdf

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In December 2003, Russia passed laws criminalizing human trafficking. This project traces the process by which law enforcement agents have adapted to and implemented these new laws by exploring what incentivizes Russian law enforcement agents have to choose human trafficking laws over other Criminal Code statutes that pre-existed the human trafficking laws. With regard to trafficking for sexual exploitation, there are two major findings.

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MCCARTHY Summary.pdf

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Focusing specifically on women’s negotiation of ethnic and religious identities, this research analyzes the relationship between ethnic and religious revival in Tatarstan and examines reasons behind Tatar Muslim women’s choice of Islam as a way of life despite challenges it might present in a secular Russian state. Preliminary findings suggest that women become religiously observant for a variety of personal reasons, but the instability associated with living in a society in transition such as present-day Russia is a common contributing factor.

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KARIMOVA Summary.pdf

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Traumatic masculinities refer to the changing gender roles, decreased ability for men to be breadwinners, and processes of demasculinization that Georgian IDPs (internally displaced people) are experiencing. INGO and NGO policies and programs, in many situations, paradoxically exacerbate these conditions by not incorporating men into their programs and activities, further isolating them. Failure to take both genders into account, or else simply ignoring men, renders both men and women even more vulnerable while living in displacement.

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KABACHNIK Summary.pdf

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