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2010 Regional Policy Symposium: Regional Security in Eastern Europe and Eurasia

The 2010 research symposium is presented by IREX in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute (WWC) and supported by the US Department of State (Title VIII Program).

The symposium will bring American junior and senior scholars and members of the policy community together to study and discuss timely issues concerning regional security in Eastern Europe and Eurasia from multi-disciplinary perspectives. Topics may include: economic stability; energy security; nonproliferation; terrorism; trafficking of drugs, weapons or people; among other issues critical to regional security.

Junior scholars will be chosen based on a national competition to present their current research on the topic of the Symposium. Grants will be awarded to approximately ten junior scholars.

The Symposium is scheduled to take place in early April 2010 in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area and will involve two full days of reviews of current research projects, roundtable discussions, and the development of policy recommendations.

 

Program Overview

The Regional Policy Symposium Program, initiated in 2000 as a new model for supporting scholarship, provides US students, scholars, and professionals with a forum to examine and discuss current policy research on the countries of Eurasia and Central and East Europe from multi-disciplinary and multi-regional approaches. The research ultimately results in the development and dissemination of policy recommendations to academic and policy communities.

PROGRAM GOALS

The program, funded by the Title VIII Program of the US Department of State, has three primary goals:

• To enable US junior and senior scholars to work together in analyzing complex issues affecting the countries of Eurasia and Central and East Europe from multi-disciplinary and multi-regional approaches.

• To encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas and networking opportunities among scholars with similar regional interests.  

• To provide policymaking communities with knowledge of current research on evolving regions and valuable policy conclusions drawn from intensive interaction among scholars.

For more information on the Regional Policy Symposium Program, please e-mail symposium@irex.org

 

2010 Title VIII Regional Policy Symposium:
Regional Security in Southern Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia

Biographies     

               

Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh
Director
Patterson School of Diplomacy & International Commerce
University of Kentucky

Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh became Director of the Patterson School and Professor of Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in 2006. He returned to academia after a twenty-two year diplomatic career with the US Department of State centered on conflict resolution, political-military affairs, and humanitarian issues. In addition to Washington assignments in the State Department, Pentagon, and on Capitol Hill, Ambassador Cavanaugh served in Berlin, Moscow, Tbilisi, Rome, and Bern. In 1992, he established the first US Embassy to the new Republic of Georgia, serving as Chargé d’affaires. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he spearheaded or helped advance peace efforts involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Turkey. Cavanaugh was confirmed by the US Senate as Ambassador/Special Negotiator responsible for conflicts in Eurasia in 2002 (in this role he served concurrently as the US Co-Chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Minsk Group). Later Cavanaugh was elected president of the State Department's Senior Seminar and criss-crossed the globe as a team leader for the Office of the Inspector General. His final government assignment was foreign policy/political advisor to US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen (the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). Cavanaugh earned his BA in Russian at the University of Florida, his MA in Government and International Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, with additional graduate work at Notre Dame and the US Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London).

 

Ms. Rebecca Cruise
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of Oklahoma

Research Topic: The Tough Cases: Security Community Development in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo

Rebecca Cruise is a PhD Candidate at the University of Oklahoma in the Political Science Subfields of Comparative Politics and International Relations. Cruise’s dissertation research focuses on female political participation in post-communist Europe. However, she has also done work in the Western Balkans and will present the findings from fieldwork conducted in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina Kosovo and Montenegro at the Symposium. Her work has recently appeared in International Politics and the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Cruise’s interests include security issues writ large, civil society, reconciliation, identity and gender. 

 

Mr. Michael P. Dennis
PhD Candidate
Department of Government
University of Texas

Research Topic: Chechen Refugees and the Politics of Violence

Michael P. Dennis is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include International Relations and Security, Comparative Russian Politics, and Foreign Policy. He specializes in militarized refugee communities, trans-national and regional terrorist organizations, ethno-nationalist conflicts, and political Islam in the North Caucasus and Central Asia. His work has been published in Security Studies. His dissertation, "Chechen Refugees and the Politics of Violence" explores the conditions under which Chechen refugees find political violence an acceptable form of social behavior. He spent close to three years living with Chechen refugees in four countries in the Caucasus and Europe. Dennis is also Director of The Chechnya Advocacy Network, a human rights group dedicated to helping Chechen refugees. Prior to entering university, Dennis was a member of the US Marine Corps Special Operations Unit which served in Somalia and Rwanda.

 

Mr. Daniel Hammer
PhD Candidate
Department of Anthropology
University of Pittsburgh

Research Topic: Democratic Disconnects: Making Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Daniel Hammer is a PhD Candidate studying cultural anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his BA in Anthropology from The Ohio State University. His research interests focus on political anthropology and include the globalization of democracy and civil society, nationalism and ethnicity, and political subjectivity. His dissertation explores how different political meanings shape the participation of local civil society organizations in democracy building in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hammer received an IREX Title VIII Individual Advanced Research Opportunity grant and a research grant from American Councils to fund his fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina during 2007 and 2008.

 

Idil P. Izmirli
Fulbright Research Fellow
Research Consultant for Crimea Policy Dialogue

Research Topic: Resurgence of Traditional, Fundamentalist, and Radical Islamic Identities in Crimea and its Implications on Regional Security

Idil P. Izmirli holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. Her field research that focuses on inter-ethnic conflict dynamics in Crimea and their security implications in post-Soviet Ukraine was supported by a number of research grants, including Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and Individual Research Opportunities Program (IARO) from IREX. She also received two consecutive grants from George Mason University’s “Partnership for Conflict Resolution Development in Ukraine” program, through which she taught conflict resolution courses and conducted graduate seminars/trainings at the National Taurida Vernatsky University (NTVU) in Simferopol, Crimea. In the US, she has taught at graduate level conflict resolution courses George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution as well as undergraduate honors courses at the Honors Program in General Education. She has also taught sociology and humanities courses at Strayer University. She is currently a research consultant for Crimean Policy Dialogue (CPD) - sponsored by the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and the Peace, Action, Training, and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), and president of the International Committee for Crimea (http://www.iccrimea.org). A chapter based on her first field research to Crimea, “Return to the Golden Cradle: Post-return Dynamics and Resettlement Angst among the Crimean Tatars” was published in Migration, Homeland, and Belonging in Eurasia (Eds. Cynthia J. Buckley and Blair Ruble). She also published articles in various academic journals including Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasus (JCAC), Democratization, George Mason University Publications “Journal of Conflict Analysis and Resolution,” and Journal of Turk Yurdu (Turkic World). Her research interests include ethno-religious and identity conflicts; forced migration, displacement and resettlement; structural violence and relative deprivation; the emergence of fundamental and radical [political] Islam in post-Soviet Eurasia, transnational aspects of the Jihadi movements, terrorism and terrorism prevention; early warning signs & preventive diplomacy; and conflict transformation through policy development.  

 

Mr. Andrew Johnston
MA Candidate
Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
University of Texas

Research Topic: Russian Use of Hard and Soft Power in Abkhazia

Andrew Johnston is an MA Candidate in the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.  His research interests and areas of specialization include Russian foreign policy; ethno-political conflict in the Caucasus; Eurasian security; conflict management; ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’ in International Relations; and Russian-Georgian relations. Johnston is writing his MA thesis about Russian use of hard and soft power in its bilateral relationship with the Georgian breakaway republic of Abkhazia.  He is presenting his ongoing research at the 2010 IREX Regional Policy Symposium.  Johnston received his BA from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2008 with a triple major in History, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Russian Language and Culture.

 

Dr. Azamat Junisbai
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Pitzer College

Research Topic: Determinants of Economic System Legitimacy in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Azamat Junisbai is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Junisbai holds a PhD in sociology from Indiana University (2009). His research focuses on issues of social and economic justice in post-Soviet Central Asia.  His dissertation research and writing were made possible with grants from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, American Councils, and the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University.  The first article based on his dissertation data is forthcoming in the summer of 2010 from Social Forces.  His other research appeared in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Demokratizatsiya – The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, and Poetics. At Pitzer, Junisbai teaches courses on Quantitative Research Methods, Contemporary Central Asia, and Social Inequality in the United States.

 

Dr. Roger Kangas
Professor
Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies
National Defense University

Roger Kangas is a Professor in the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University in Washington, DC. From 1999 to 2007, Kangas was the Professor of Central Asian Studies at the George C. Marshall Center for European Security in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director of the Central Asian Institute, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, DC; Central Asian Course Coordinator, Foreign Service Institute, US Department of State; Research Analyst on Central Asian Affairs, Open Media Research Institute (OMRI) in Prague, Czech Republic, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Mississippi. During the past fifteen years, Kangas has been an advisor to NATO/ISAF, the US Air Force Special Operations School, National Democratic Institute, International Research and Exchanges Board, American Councils, Academy for Educational Development, USIA, USAID, and other US government agencies on issues relating to Central and south Asia, Russia and the Southern Caucasus. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on Central Asian politics and security and is currently finishing work on a book entitled Playing Solitaire: Competing National Security Strategies in Central Asia. He received his Bachelors of Arts from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (1985) and his PhD in Political Science from Indiana University (1991).

 

Ms. Liz Malinkin
Program Associate
Kennan Institute
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Liz Malinkin has been at the Kennan Institute since January 2007. Her current projects include working with the Centers for Advanced Study and Education (CASEs) in Russia, coordinating the Kennan Kyiv Project, and researching issues of migration. She received her BA in history from Carleton College in 2001, after which she lived in Vladimir, Russia for two years and studied Russian language, literature, history, and politics at Vladimir State Pedagogical University. In 2006 she completed an MA in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan and wrote her thesis on ethnic minorities in the Moscow workforce.

 

 

 

Mr. David E. Merrell
PhD Candidate
Asian Law Center
School of Law
University of Washington

Research Topic: How do Uzbek Councils of Elders Resolve Disputes as Minorities in Central Asia and what are Possible Policy Implications for Law Reform Efforts in the Region?

David E. Merrell is a member of the bar associations of the states of Utah and Idaho, where he practiced construction, business, and real estate law. Merrell taught comparative law as a Fulbright Scholar in the Kyrgyz Republic and construction law as a visiting professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He received a JD from the University of Idaho and a BA in Construction Management (with minors in business and Arabic) from Brigham Young University.  He recently completed an LL.M. in Asian and Comparative Law at the University of Washington where he studied Uzbek and Central Asian and Islamic law. Currently, he is enrolled in the Asian & Comparative Law PhD program at the University of Washington School of Law. His dissertation topic is on community-based dispute resolution methods in Central Asia.

Ms. Olga Oliker
Senior International Policy Analyst
RAND Corporation

Olga Oliker is a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. Oliker’s research focuses on political and security issues affecting Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.  She has also written extensively on international efforts to advance political, economic, social, and security sector development in countries in conflict as well as in countries undergoing peaceful political and economic transitions. Her interests also include the implications of transition for development, including displacement and other forms of voluntary and involuntary migration. Oliker's research and hands-on efforts on these topics have taken her to the countries of the former Soviet Union, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Liberia, among others. She speaks frequently to the press and has testified to the U.S. Congress on these and related issues.  In early 2004, Oliker took time away from her research to serve as a special advisor for national security affairs to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, where she assisted in the creation of Iraqi national security decision-making structures. Before coming to RAND in 1999, Oliker worked as an independent consultant and held positions in the US Departments of Defense and Energy. Her recent RAND publications include Russian Foreign Policy: Sources and Implications; Guidebook for Supporting Economic Development in Stability Operations; Improving Capacity for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations; Women and Nation-Building; Making Liberia Safe: Transformation of the National Security Sector; and Securing Tyrants or Fostering Reform? U.S. Internal Security Assistance to Repressive and Transitioning Regimes.

 

Dr. Robert Orttung
President
Resource Security Institute

Robert Orttung is President of the Resource Security Institute and a visiting scholar at the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Orttung is a co-editor of the Russian Analytical Digest, a biweekly newsletter that examines political and economic developments in Russia and the Caucasus Analytical Digest. Previously he worked at the Jefferson Institute, American University’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center, the EastWest Institute, and the Open Media Research Institute. He earned a PhD in Political Science from UCLA and a BA from Stanford University. His books include: (Co-edited with Andreas Wenger and Jeronim Perovic), Energy and the Transformation of International Relations: Toward a New Producer–Consumer Framework, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; (co-edited with Jeronim Perovic and Andreas Wenger), Russian Energy Power and Foreign Relations: Implications for conflict and cooperation, London: Routledge, 2009; (co-edited with Anthony Latta) Russia’s Battle with Crime, Corruption and Terrorism (Routledge, 2008); (co-edited with Andreas Wenger and Jeronim Perovic), Russian Business Power: The Role of Business in Russian Foreign and Security Relations (Routledge, 2006); (co-edited with Andrey Makarychev), Counter-Terrorism Strategies in the US, UK, France, Turkey, and Russia: A Comparative Analysis, (IOS Press, 2006); (co-edited with Peter Reddaway) The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Reform of Federal-Regional Relations, 2 volumes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 and 2005), The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation: A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (M.E. Sharpe, 2000), (with Laura Belin) Russia’s 1995 Parliamentary Elections: The Battle for the Duma (M.E. Sharpe, 1997) and From Leningrad to St. Petersburg: Democratization in a Russian City (St. Martin's Press, 1995). His articles have appeared in academic journals, such as World Politics, and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune.

 

Dr. William Pomeranz
Deputy Director
Kennan Institute
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

William Pomeranz is the Deputy Director of the Kennan Institute, a part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars located in Washington, DC. In addition, Pomeranz has taught Russian law at the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies, Georgetown University.  Prior to joining the Kennan Institute, Pomeranz practiced international law in the United States and Moscow, Russia.  He also served as Program Officer for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus at the National Endowment for Democracy from 1992-1999. Pomeranz received his JD cum laude from American University in 1998. In addition, he was awarded a PhD in Russian History from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, where he wrote his dissertation on the emergence and development of the pre-revolutionary Russian legal profession (the advokatura). Pomeranz's research interests include Russian legal history as well as current Russian commercial and constitutional law.

 

Mr. David Rainbow
PhD Candidate
Department of History
New York University

Research Topic: Regionalism that Strengthens the State? Siberian Patriots at the End of the Nineteenth Century

After a stint as a merchant mariner, David Rainbow studied history and philosophy at Fresno Pacific University in central California, where he earned a BA in 2002. He then earned an MA in European intellectual history from Drew University and studied Russian in St. Petersburg for a year, before beginning doctoral studies in modern history at New York University in 2007. He is currently preparing to return to Russia for research on his dissertation, which concerns the history of Siberian regionalism and imperial politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research interests also include the comparative study of empires, the history of political philosophy, the concept of nationality, utopian thought, and various schemes to bridge the Bering Strait.

 

Ms. Sarah Shields
Senior Program Officer
Education Programs Division
IREX

Sarah Shields is a Senior Program Officer in the Education Programs Division at IREX where she manages the Regional Policy Symposium Program, the Teaching Fellowship Program for Eurasian and Eastern European Studies, Partnerships for Collaborative Research Program, and alumni programming for the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship Program and the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Eurasia and Central Asia. Prior to this, she helped manage the Contemporary Issues Fellowship Program and the US-Russia Experts Forum. She received her MA in Russian and Central Asian regional studies from American University's School of International Service, and received her BA in Russian area studies from Smith College. Shields also has served as an intern at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

 

Dr. Nikolai N. Sokov
Senior Research Associate
Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies

Dr. Nikolai Sokov is a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Sokov graduated from Moscow State University in 1981 and subsequently worked at the Institute of US and Canadian Studies and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. From 1987-92 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and later Russia, and participated in START I and START II negotiations as well as in a number of summit and ministerial meetings. Sokov has a PhD from the University of Michigan (1996) and (the Soviet equivalent of a PhD) Candidate of Historical Sciences degree from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (1986). He has published extensively on international security and arms control. Sokov is the author of Russian Strategic Modernization: Past and Future (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), co-author and co-editor of the first Russian-language college-level textbook on nuclear nonproliferation (Yadernoe Nerasprostranenie, Vol.I-II, PIR Center, 1st edition 2000, 2nd edition 2002), and several monographs.

 

Dr. Jason E. Strakes
Regional Studies Analyst
Afghanistan Research Reachback Center
United States Army Iraq

Research Topic: Elite Perceptions of the International System and National Security Policies in the South Caucasus

Jason E. Strakes is a regional studies analyst at the US Army Iraq/Afghanistan Research Reachback Center in Newport News, VA, where he serves as a consultant to military and civilian personnel on the domestic and international conditions of the Greater Middle East. He received an MA in International Studies and PhD in Political Science from the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include foreign policy analysis, defense and security policy, Central Eurasia, and the international relations of developing and former Soviet states. During 2008-2009 he completed a research fellowship with the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA) School of International Affairs on the linkage between the perceptions of decision-makers regarding the country’s position within the international system, and the formulation of the national security concept. He has published articles on the above topics in Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Third World Studies, Defense & Security Analysis and Caucasus & Globalization, and recently contributed a co-authored reference chapter on strategic relationships in post-communist foreign policies to The International Studies Encyclopedia (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010). Strakes currently serves on the editorial board of the Caucasian Review of International Affairs, and is an executive secretary of the Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES).

 

Mr. David Szakonyi
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
Columbia University

Research Topic: Autocratic Antagonism: Explaining the Absence of Cooperation in the Water, Gas and Electricity Sectors in Central Asia
David Szakonyi is a first-year doctoral student in the political science department at Columbia University. His research interests include comparative authoritarianism, international political economy, corruption, and democratization in post-communist Eurasia and Iran. He is the co-author of Under Siege: Inter-ethnic Relations in De Facto Abkhazia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; with Tom Trier and Hedvig Lohm), as well as articles in the Journal of International Affairs, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, and Vestnik: The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies. He is currently working on a project on informal institutions and markets in Central Asia.

 

 

 

Ms. Joyce Warner
Director
Education Programs Division
IREX

Joyce Warner has been with IREX for over a decade and was appointed director of IREX's Education Programs Division in early 1998. In her current position, Joyce provides leadership to IREX’s basic, higher, international, and professional education programs totaling $20 million each year. She oversees a team of over 75 staff working at IREX offices around the world. Previously, Joyce held positions as the deputy director of the US-Ukraine Foundation's Community Partnerships Project, and as a program manager at Wellstart International working in the area of global maternal and child health protection. Joyce has also taught at the primary school level overseas and at the secondary school level in New York State, from which she received her Certificate of Qualification. Originally from eastern New York, Joyce received her bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with support from an Associated Universities Trustee Scholarship. There, she studied Russian and French Studies, as well as education, received the Undergraduate Excellence Recognition Award, and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Joyce then accepted a graduate teaching fellowship from The American University where she received a Master of Arts degree in Russian Studies and International Business and later a Master of Business Administration degree, with a concentration in management information systems, from the Virginia State Polytechnic University.

 

Dr. Amanda Wooden
Assistant Professor
Environmental Studies Program
Bucknell University

Research Topic: Tracking & Mapping Public Opinion about Environmental Conflict in Kyrgyzstan

Amanda Wooden is Assistant Professor of Environmental Politics & Policy in the Environmental Studies Program at Bucknell University. Wooden’s research specializations are environmental security, environmental policy and public opinion, and water politics in Central Eurasia. She has a PhD from Claremont Graduate University in International Relations and Public Policy, an MA in International Studies, and a BA from Syracuse University in Political Science and Russian Language, Literature and Culture. Wooden has lived and worked in the former Soviet Union a combined total of almost five years and served as election observer for seven ODIHR/OSCE missions in the region. In 2006-07, she served as Economic and Environmental Field Officer in Osh, Kyrgyzstan for the OSCE. In 2009, Wooden was awarded the American Councils Special Initiatives Fellowship to conduct field research in Kyrgyzstan on public environmental attitudes.  She has published several book chapters and articles and most recently co-edited a book published by Routledge in 2009, The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Enduring Legacies and Emerging Challenges.

 

Mr. Yuri M. Zhukov
PhD Candidate
Department of Government
Harvard University

Research Topic: Roads and the Diffusion of Insurgent Violence

Yuri M. Zhukov is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. His substantive research interests include comparative foreign and defense policy, political geography and military affairs. His methodological areas of interest include spatial statistics and text analysis. He received his MA in National Security Studies from the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and his AB in International Relations from Brown University. Before coming to Harvard, Zhukov spent six years in a variety of civilian and contractor positions at the Department of Defense, most recently as a Program Manager at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.

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