Senior Scholar Biographies
Dr. Charles King, Assistant Professor of Foreign Service and Government at Georgetown University
Charles King is an assistant professor in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University, where he also holds the university's Ion Ratiu Chair of Romanian Studies. A former Marshall Scholar, he received a doctorate in politics from Oxford University. Dr. King has worked as a research fellow at New College, Oxford, and as a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He is a frequent traveler to Eastern Europe, especially Romania and the Balkans, and is a fluent speaker of Romanian. His articles on the region have appeared in Foreign Policy, International Affairs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Slavic Review, and other publications, and he has contributed opinion pieces to such newspapers as The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor. His other publications include Ending Civil Wars (1997), Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (as co-editor, 1998), and The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (2000). A term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Dr. King's research interests include ethnicity and nationalism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He has lectured widely on these and other topics and appears frequently as a commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, Voice of America, the BBC, and other media.
Dr. Boian Koulov, Adjunct Professor of Political Geography at the Elliot School at George Washington University
Boian Koulov is currently adjunct professor of political geography at the Elliot School at George Washington University and the former chair of the European Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. He initiated the first US-Bulgarian collaborative project in geography (1989), which was funded by the MacArthur Foundation. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on the environmental policy implications of the political and economic transition in Southeastern Europe and is also the co-editor of Bulgaria in Transition - Environmental Consequences of Economic and Political Transformation (1998).
Dr. Bruce R. Kunihom, Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University
Bruce Kuniholm received his BA from Dartmouth College in 1964 and his MA, MAPPS and PhD from Duke University, where he has been Director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He is currently a professor of history and public policy, director of the Center for International Studies, and vice provost for academic and international affairs. He has also worked on the US Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and Policy Planning Staff, and served as a consultant for the United States Army, The United States Marine Corps, the United Technologies Corporation and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. His research has focused mainly on diplomatic history and US foreign policy in the Near and Middle East. He has had fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations/National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. His first book, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey and Greece, won the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He has written other books on the Palestinian problem, U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, and Greek-Turkish relations, and is currently writing a book on the United States and Turkey. In 1989 he won the Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award.
Dr. James R. Millar, Professor of Economics and International Affairs and the Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at The Georgia Washignton University
James Millar is director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, and professor of economics and international affairs at The George Washington University, as well as chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). Previously, Dr. Millar was director of international programs and studies and professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a Wilson Fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in 1988-89, and Guggenheim Fellow in 1995-96. He served in the US Army and was educated at The University of Texas (BA, High Honors) (Austin) where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and Cornell University (Ph.D., Economic Theory). Dr. Millar served as editor of the Slavic Review from 1975-80 and is currently the editor of the journal Problems of Post-Communism. He is a member of the International Council of the journal Voprosy Ekonomiki and the New York Academy of Sciences, and treasurer of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He has also served as a consultant and instructor in macroeconomics for the International Business School (Executive Training Program), Inc., which has trained more than 5,000 mid-level executives from prominent Russian companies, including Varyogan Neftigaz and Orenburg Neftigaz. Dr. Millar is author of many scholarly articles and a number of books including The Soviet Economic Experiment (1990) and the ABCs of Soviet Socialism which one the Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Book in Non-Fiction in 1981. He also serves as a member of the IREX Governing Board.
Dr. Boyko Nitzov, Associate Director, Institute for Energy Economics and Policy, Sarkeys Energy Center, the University of Oklahoma
Boyko Nitzov received his PhD in energy economics from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1986. From 1998 to the present, he has served as the associate director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy at Sarkeys Energy Center, the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Nitzov is involved in research and consulting in various aspects of the energy industry, energy policy, and the environment, specifically upstream oil and gas projects and pipelines, and foreign technical aid programs of UAID, US TDA, the World Bank, and for clients of the Sarkeys Energy Center and its institutes. He is also involved in making advances in joint programs in technology development and transfer for the Sarkeys Energy Center and its partners from Central Asia, the Balkans, and other regions, inclusive of the establishment of the Caspian Petroleum Technology Institute with partners of Sarkeys Energy Center from the Caspian Sea region. He is a participant in the PECC Energy Forum Technical and Policy Center, located in the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy and is a distinguished lecturer to the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Council, the Dallas Committee of Foreign Relations, the U.S. Energy Council, and the USAEE.
Junior Scholar Biographies
Ronald Bobroff is a visiting professor at Duke University. He recently completed his dissertation "Roads to Glory? Sergei D. Sazonov, the Turkish Straits and Russian Foreign Policy, 1910-1916" at Duke. In January 2000, his article "Behind the Balkan Wars: Russian Foreign Policy toward Bulgaria and the Turkish Straits, 1912-1913" appeared in the Russian Review. He is currently a member of the Eurasian Seas Working Group at Duke.
Susan Davis, director of international programs at the American Political Science Association, earned her PhD at Emory University in 1997. She has traveled extensively throughout the former Soviet Union and taught at a number of different universities including Georgia Institute of Technology, Oglethorpe University, and Grand Valley State University. Dr. Davis is an adjunct faculty member for the Air Force Special Operations School where she teaches about the Caucasus and ethnic conflict. She is currently working on projects related to the Caucasus and military issues.
Howard Eissenstat is a doctoral candidate at UCLA and is currently writing his dissertation on the development of nationalism in the early Turkish Republic.
Kristen Ghodsee is a doctoral candidate in social and cultural studies in the department of education at UC Berkeley and is specializing in women, gender, and sexuality. She spent one year in Bulgaria as a Fulbright scholar studying women, economic transition, and tourism employment. She is currently writing her dissertation on the Bulgarian tourism industry and women's employment in the service sector.
Mica Hall is an assistant professor of Russian at the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey. She is currently detached to Medina Joint Language Center in order to develop and implement new courses, as well as edit, rewrite, and update curricula. She wrote her dissertation on the Russian language of the Crimean Tatars, and continues to engage in research focusing on linguistic and sociolinguistic issues of peoples of Crimea.
Fred Hiebert is the Robert H. Dyson assistant professor in anthropology and assistant curator for Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Since 1995, he has directed the Black Sea Trade Project, an interdisciplinary archaeological study of settlement and economy around the Black Sea. The project approaches the distinctive cultural factors of the Black Sea through time, by high technology archaeological survey on land and underwater.
Robert Krikorian is currently a doctoral candidate in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at Harvard University, where he is specializing in the modern history of the South Caucasus. He is also the director of Research of the Institute for Armenian Studies and coauthor of Armenia: At the Crossroads. He holds a BA in Government from Clark University; an MA in political science from The George Washington University and a certificate in philology from Erevan State University.
Mary Matthews is currently completing her dissertation examining the formation of the Black and Caspian Environmental Programmes, at the University of Georgia Department of Political Science. Her research interests include energy and environmental politics in Europe and the former Soviet Union. She has her master's degree in Political Science, and holds a Graduate Certificate in Ecology.
Sean Pollock is a doctoral candidate in history at Harvard University. His dissertation deals with imperial rivalries, borderland diplomacy, and Russia's governors-general in the Caucasus, 1762-1825. He received his master's degree from Harvard University's Russian Research Center in 1996. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in International Studies: Russian and East Europe.
Melanie Ram is currently a program officer for the Japan International Cooperation Agency where she works on foreign aid to developing countries. She holds a PhD in political science from George Washington University and is the author of "Transformation through European Integration: The Domestic Effects of European Union Law in Romania" in The Transformations of 1989-1999: Triumph or Tragedy?, edited by John S. Micgiel, 2000. Dr. Ram is currently writing a book on the European Union influence on legal reform and democratization in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989.
Steven Roper is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. He has published widely on East Europe, Romania and Moldova. He is the author of the book, Romania: The Unfinished Revolution (2000). He received his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1995.
Sibel Sezer recently received her PhD in environmental management and lectures on "Environmental Politics and Policy Formulation" at Bilgi University in Istanbul. She also works as a consultant on World Bank and UNDP projects on the Black Sea region. She worked as the environmental economist at the Global Environmental Facility Black Sea Programme. Her overall duties included project management, supervision and evaluation of consultants, coordination of technical works, policy formulation, capacity building, developing projects and coordinating activities of non-governmental organizations. Specific management responsibilities included the portfolio of Black Sea Investments, the Regional Black Sea Environmental Fund and the Black Sea Environmental Priorities Study.
Vanessa Von Struensee is a Fulbright Scholar in Law in Ukraine and is currently teaching courses at Donetsk State University. She holds degrees in law and public health and is concerned with issues of trade and environmental peace and security, as well as human rights. She has begun to write on these and energy issues in the context of the Black Sea region while studying in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Jessica Trelogan is a specialist in classics and classical archaeology. She received her master's degree from the University if Texas in 1996 and has since worked as a researcher for the Institute of Classical Archaeology. Since her first exposure to the Black Sea region as part of the joint US-Ukrainian-Russian archaeological project in Chersonesos (Crimea, Ukraine), she has been working on a remote sensing and GIS project which seeks to study, map and protect both the cultural and natural resources of Chersonesos.
Samuel Whitt is a first year graduate student in political science at Vanderbilt University. He received his bachelor's degree in Russian and German from the University of the South and a bachelor's degree in political Science from the University of Tennessee in 1998. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he conducted research on social movements in Eastern Europe on a fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. He has recently conducted research on privatization and property restitution on the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria with a fellowship from the US Fulbright Student Program.
Speaker Biographies
Jennifer D.P. Moroney is a NATO Fellow, an associate at DFI International, and an adjunct professor at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. She received her PhD from the University of Kent at Canterbury, United Kingdom, in April 2000 and has published articles and book reviews in such journals as Security Dialogue, Europe-Asia Studies, International Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, and is currently coediting a book on Ukraine's Foreign and Security Policy. She is a recognized expert on Ukraine's relations with NATO and the EU, as well as regional security issues in Europe.
Dennis Jay O'Brien is currently the director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Policy at the University of Oklahoma, and the John A & Donnie Brock Chair Professor for Energy Economics & Business. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations of New York and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Energy Foundation, Regina. Among his previous professions, he served as the advisor to the chairman of Caltex Petroleum Corporation, executive director of Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Energy Forum, managing director of Petroad, consultant to ARAMCO, and senior petroleum officer for the US Department of Energy. He received his PhD in 1974 from the University of Missouri at Columbia and received his MA in 1963 from the University of Nebraska at Omaha