2002 Caspian Sea Regional Policy Symposium Participants

Senior Scholar Biographies

Dr. Douglas W. Blum is a professor of political science at Providence College, and adjunct professor of international studies at the Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Institute of International Studies at Brown University. His general research interests include the politics of energy development in the Caspian Sea, cultural globalization, Russian foreign policy, and the causes and consequences of Russian integration into the international economy. Much of his recent work has focused on the Caspian region, and he has published and spoken on a number of related themes including Russian policy, American policy, energy geopolitics, and environmental security in the Caspian basin. He is currently working on a monograph entitled State, Society, and Cultural Globalization: The Discourse of National Identity in the Transcaspian Region. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 1991.

Dr. Roger D. Kangas is a professor of Central Asian Studies at the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Strategic Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He is a specialist on political and economic matters in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea basin. Prior to joining the Marshal Center in 1999, Dr. Kangas was the Central Asian course coordinator for the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. From 1996-1998, Dr. Kangas was deputy director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at The Johns Hopkins University--Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Since 1992, Dr. Kangas has worked with and advised the USAF Special Operations School, the National Democratic Institute, IREX, ACTR, AED, USIA, USAID, and other U.S. government agencies on issues relating to Central Asia, as well as Russia and the Southern Caucasus. Dr. Kangas graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1985 and earned his Ph.D. in political science at Indiana University in 1991.

Dr. Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University. Prior to joining the GMU faculty in 1988, he served on a temporary appointment at the U.S. Department of State (INR/SEE) in 1982 and on the staff of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (1985-87). He has held fellowships or grants from the Brookings Institution (1980-81), the Rockefeller Foundation (1982-84), the Kennan Institute (1985), the U.S. Institute of Peace (1989-90 and 1994-95) and the Earhart Foundation (Summer 2001). His most recent publications include "Unfaithful Allies" (on Russian-Iranian relations), which was published in the Northwestern Journal of International Affairs, Summer 2001, and "Saudi-Russian Relations in the Putin Era," which was published in the Middle East Journal, Autumn 2001. He is also a contributor to the Open Society Institute's EURASIANET. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at M.I.T. in 1982.

Dr. Bruce R. Kuniholm is a professor of history and public policy, director of the Center for International Studies, and vice provost for academic and international affairs at Duke University. He has worked on the U.S. 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 U.S. foreign policy in the Near and Middle East. He has held 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 received Ph.D. from Duke University, where he has been Director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

Dr. Gerard J. Libaridian is currently a visiting professor of history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to joining the faculty at University of Michigan, Dr. Libaridian served as the Advisor (1991-1994) and then Senior Advisor (1994-1997) to the former President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, for foreign policy and security issues. During his seven years of work in Armenia he also served as First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993-94), negotiator for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and coordinator of conflict-related policy in the Office of the President. Dr. Libaridian has taught extensively and authored a number of volumes and articles on Armenia, the Near East, and the Caucasus. His most recent volume, The Challenge of Statehood, has also been published in French and Armenian. He is also the founder and director of the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1982 to 1990) and served as editor of the Armenian Review (1983-1988).

Junior Scholar Biographies

Erica Johnson is co-director of Eurasia policy studies and managing editor at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), where she is responsible for the day-to-day operations of all NBR programs related to Russian and Central Asia. Additionally, she reviews manuscripts, copyedits those accepted for publication, and oversees the publication process. Ms. Johnson holds a master's degree in Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies from the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and a bachelor's degree in Russian language and literature from Wake Forest University.

Carolyn Kissane is an adjunct professor in the department of international and transcultural studies at the Teachers College Columbia University. Dr. Kissane received her PhD in comparative education from Teachers College Columbia University with a specialization in politics and education. Her areas of research include the history, education and reconciliation of transitional societies, educational reform in the Caspian region, and pos-Soviet educational change in relation to economic development. She is also a founding member of Current Issues in Comparative Education (CICE), an on-line journal from Teachers College.

Keely Lange is a doctoral candidate in the department of government at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a three-year US EPA Science to Achieve Results Fellowship and was also among the first recipients of the National Security Education Program Fellowship. Ms. Lange is affiliated with the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University. She has also published several articles and presented numerous papers on various aspects of the Caspian Sea region.

Mary Matthews received her PhD in political science from the University of Georgia in 2001. She also holds a master's degree in political science, and a graduate certification in principles of conservation and sustainable development from the University of Georgia Institute of Ecology. Dr. Matthews has focused extensively on energy and environmental politics in Western Europe, the Black Sea region, and the Caspian Sea region. She has had articles published in Problems of Post-Communism and has edited a symposium on interest groups in energy and environmental policy making for Policy Studies Journal. Her recent work has focused on developing a regional stakeholder analysis for the Caspian Environment Programme of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She is currently teaching courses at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg in environmental science and policy.

Kelly McMann is currently an associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian Studies. In the summer of 2002, she will begin to work at Case Western Reserve University as an assistant professor of political science. Dr. McMann's research has focused on democratic development, subnational politics, and state-building, particularly in Central Asia and Russia. Her publications include "The Civic Realm in Kyrgyzstan: The Pervasive Influence of Soviet Economic Legacies," forthcoming in the edited volume Reconceptualizing Central Asia: States and Societies in Formation. Dr. McMann received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2000.

Shannon O'Lear is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she teaches courses on international conflicts and on Russia and Eurasia. Her research focuses on political and environmental in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea regions. Dr. O'Lear has traveled to Azerbaijan twice and was also part of a National Academy of Science/National Research Council project group that traveled to Armenia to examine energy issues. She is currently developing a public opinion survey project to collect data on environmental perceptions and political activism in Azerbaijan.

Michael Reynolds is a doctoral candidate in the department of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. He is currently writing his dissertation on Ottoman-Russian relations and the influence of Pan Islam and Pan Turkism from 1908-1922. Mr. Reynolds holds a bachelor's degree in government and Slavic languages from Harvard University and a master's degree in political science from Columbia University. He has several years of experience in Turkey and Russia and speaks fluent Turkish and Russian. Mr. Reynolds has written articles on these countries and related issues for the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Adam Stulberg is an assistant professor of international affairs at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian foreign and security policies, international security, international relations theory, and politics of proliferation. His primary research focuses on the political economy of Russia's energy leverage in the Caspian Basin. Dr. Stulberg is currently working on a book manuscript that explicates Russia's mixed pattern of success at controlling the ownership, development, and export of the residual energy infrastructure in the post-Soviet space, and the implications that this holds for neo-imperial solutions to contemporary energy security issues in Eurasia. Dr. Stulberg earned his PhD in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1996. He also holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University, a master's degree in political science from the University of California, and a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Michigan.

Robert Ware is an associate professor in the department of philosophical studies at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. He holds a master's degree in politics from Oxford University and a master's degree in philosophy from the University of California at San Diego. Dr. Ware is also the author of numerous articles and papers on Dagestan, Chechnya, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea region.

Cynthia Werner is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Texas A&M University. She received her PhD from Indiana University in 1997. She has been traveling to Kazakhstan since 1992 in order to conduct research on a variety of topics, including household networking, gift exchange, bride kidnapping, tourism development, and the impact of nuclear testing. Dr. Werner has published articles in Human Organization, Central Asian Survey, Islamic Quarterly, and Central Asian Monitor. She is currently preparing a book manuscript entitled "Survival on the New Silk Road: Post-Soviet Transitions and Transnational Processes in Central Asia." Her research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER), and the National Research Council.

Speaker Biographies

Bahman Aghai Diba is a consultant for Will E. Beheman & Associates, LLC and is an expert in the fields of international law and international economic affairs. Dr. Aghai Diba's previous work experience includes serving on the academic board of the International Institute for Caspian Studies (IICS) in Tehran, Iran, as well as serving as an international law expert in the legal department of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Aghai Diba holds his PhD in international law from Delhi University and his master's degree in international relations from the Center for Graduate International Studies, Tehran University. In addition, he has published 12 articles on the law of the sea and Iranian policy and legal issues, including "The Legal Regime of the Caspian Sea." He also has been interviewed by various media, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe (Radio Liberty), about Caspian issues.

Blair A. Ruble is currently director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He also serves as co-coordinator for comparative urban studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. A native of New York, Dr. Ruble received his MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Toronto (1973, 1977), and an AB degree with Highest Honors in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1971). He has edited seven volumes, including two reference works and five collections of articles, and is the author of four monographic studies. His most recent books are his study, Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka (Cambridge University Press, 2001); and, the edited volume Fragmented Space in the Russian Federation (co-edited with Jodi Koehn and Nancy E. Popson) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). He has lectured widely and has taught at The George Washington University and the University of Paris-X (Nanterre). He also has been a scholar-in- residence at the Juridical Faculty of Leningrad State University (1974-1975), the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1979, 1981, 1984, 1986), and the Law Faculty of Kyoto University (1996, 2002).