IREX is pleased to announce the 2013-2014 Short-Term Travel Grants [7](STG) recipients. The Short-Term Travel Grant is designed to allow U.S. scholars and professionals to conduct short, targeted open-source research on current regional issues of importance to the U.S. policy-making community.
This year's fellows will be traveling to 16 countries across Eastern Europe and Eurasia to perform policy relevant field research, covering topics such as labor migration, national identity, health care, and democratization. Meet our new scholars below and make sure to visit IREX's online library [8] to read their research findings.
The Short-Term Travel Grants Program is funded by the Title VIII Program [9] through the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the U.S. Department of State.
Victor Agadjanian
Arizona State University
Research Topic: "International Labor Migration and its Consequences for Socioeconomic Development and Political Stability in Uzbekistan"
Research Country: Uzbekistan
Lori Amy
Georgia Southern University
Research Topic: "Mobilizing Memories: Ex-Political Prisoners as Palimpsests of Citizen and Nation in Albania’s 2012 Hunger Strikes"
Research Country: Albania
John Ashbrook
Sweet Briar College
Research Topic: "On Being European: How European Union Accession Shapes Croatian Identities"
Research Countries: Croatia, Slovenia
Quintin Beazer
Florida State University
Research Topic: "The Dangers of Discretion: Bureaucratic Leeway & Regulatory Uncertainty in Russia's Regions"
Research Country: Russia
Max Bergholz
Concordia University
Research Topic: "None of Us Dared Say Anything: Mass Killing in a Bosnian Community During World War II and the Postwar Culture of Silence"
Research Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia
Michele Commercio
University of Vermont
Research Topic: "Retraditionalization from Below: Women’s Attitudes in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan"
Research Country: Kyrgyzstan
Linda Cook
Brown University
Research Topic: "'Tajik Labor Migrants to Russia: Their Access to Health and Welfare Services"
Research Country: Tajikistan
Julie Fairbanks
Coe College
Research Topic: "Space and Place-Making in Greater Sochi, Russia"
Research Country: Russia
Benjamin Gatling
Duke University
Research Topic: "Adaptation, Revivalism, and Religious Politics: Sufi Life in Tajikistan"
Research Country: Tajikistan
Kathryn Hendley
University of Wisconsin
Research Topic: "Explaining Antipathy Towards Mediation in Russia"
Research Country: Russia
Idil Izmirli
George Mason University
Research Topic: "Ukraine’s Locus of Instability: Escalating Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Religious Conflict in Crimea"
Research Country: Ukraine
Erica Johnson
University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill
Research Topic: "Tensions in Health: Building Primary Health Care Systems in Central Asia"
Research Countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
Paul Josephson
Colby College
Research Topic: "Russian Rivers in Russian History: A Political, Environmental, and Cultural History"
Research Country: Russia
Slavko Komarnytsky
North Carolina State University
Research Topic: "Water Safety Across Borders in Central Asia"
Research Countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
Andrew Konitzer
University of Pittsburgh
Research Topic: "The Forensics of Patronage: Identifying the Linkage between Parties and Public Sector Employment in Serbia"
Research Countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia
Larisa Kurtovic
DePaul University
Research Topic: "The Nationalist Order and Party Patronage in Post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina"
Research Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jody LaPorte
Wittenberg University
Research Topic: "The Politics of Wealth in Post-Soviet Georgia"
Research Country: Georgia
Joanna Mishtal
University of Central Florida
Research Topic: "Understanding Advocacy Work in the Struggle for “In Vitro” Regulation in Poland"
Research Country: Poland
Ausra Park
Siena College
Research Topic: "Politics of Human Trafficking: Governments’ Political Games and NGOs"
Research Country: Lithuania
Michele Rivkin-Fish
University of North Carolina
Research Topic: "The Unmaking of Russia’s Abortion Culture: Historical Roots of Contemporary Reproductive Politics"
Research Country: Russia
Elton Skendaj
Florida International University
Research Topic: "Building Democracy and State Institutions in Post-War Kosovo"
Research Country: Kosovo
Curt Woolhiser
Brandeis University
Research Topic: "A Gift to the Nation: The Social Identities and Linguistic Practices of Student-Age 'New Speakers' of Ukrainian and Belarusian"
Research Country: Belarus, Ukraine