Meet Our Scholars

The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) hosts scholars from around the world who are conducting research on topics related to Europe and/or Eurasia (the territory corresponding to the former Soviet Union). These visiting scholars include senior scholars, post-doctoral scholars, and advanced graduate students. Visiting Scholars present on their research as part of IERES’ visiting scholar roundtable event series. 

Visiting Scholars

Dusan Bozalka, Visiting Scholar
Conspiracy Theories as Transnational Strategic Narratives: The Online Ecosystems of the QAnon Movement in France, Germany, and Italy (2017-2022)

Dusan Bozalka is a PhD candidate in Information Science at the Centre d’Analyse et de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur l’Étude des Médias (CARISM) at Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, as well as the Institute of Strategic Research at the École Militaire (IRSEM). His research focuses on the dissemination of strategic conspiracy narratives by QAnon influencers in English, French, German, and Italian digital spaces. Additionally, his work explores how these influencers engage with and amplify Russian disinformation narratives to their audiences. He employs a mixed computational approach, combining strategic communication concepts with sociological analysis of multiplatform social networks.

Dusan was recently nominated to receive a Schuman Fulbright Scholarship rewarding innovative projects, which allows him to pursue his research at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES). He also received a merit-based grant to be a Visiting PhD researcher at the Center Marc Bloch in Berlin, where he studied the formation of digital communities on alternative platforms. Dusan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Translation from the University of Mons (Belgium) and two Master’s degrees in International Relations and History from the Sorbonne and Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas. He is fluent in French, English, German, and Italian, skills that facilitate his cross-cultural research and analysis.

Oleksandr Fisun, Visiting Scholar
The Puzzle of Ukrainian Democracy: Presidents, Oligarchs and Informal Politics after the Euromaidan Revolution

Dr. Oleksandr Fisun is a professor of political science and the department head at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine (B.A. with Highest Honors in Political Economy, 1987; C.Sc. in Philosophical Sciences, 1990; D.Sc. habil in Political Science, 2009). His research interests concentrate on Ukrainian and post-Soviet politics. During the past ten years, he has held visiting fellowships at the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, & Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington (Seattle); the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton); the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki; the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam);  the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto; the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Warsaw), and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. His publications include “Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations” (Kharkiv, 2006) and numerous book chapters and articles on comparative democratization, informal politics, neopatrimonialism, and regime change in Ukraine and post-Soviet Eurasia. He serves as President of the “Observatory of Democracy” policy research center in Kharkiv, which he founded in 2016 with a group of political experts to improve democratic accountability, civic activism, free and fair elections, and citizen awareness in eastern frontline Ukrainian regions. 

Yusin Lee, Visiting Scholar
The Russia-Ukraine War and Its Impact on Interdependence in Energy Trade between Russia and the EU

Yusin Lee is a Professor of Political Science at Yeungnam University, South Korea. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in 2004. Since then his research has mainly focused on energy policies and energy security. He has published numerous papers on these issues in Korean and English. Two of his papers, “Opportunities and Risks in Turkmenistan’s Quest for Diversification of Its Gas Export Routes” and “Interdependence, Issue Importance, and the 2009 Russia-Ukraine Gas Conflict,” appeared in one of the most prestigious journals in the area of energy, “Energy Policy.” 

Iana Levinskaia, Visiting Scholar
Philosophical Narratives in Contemporary Russian Ideology: Toward a Deconstruction of Ideological Discourse

Iana Levinskaia holds master’s degrees in philisophy and history and is a doctoral student at the University of the National Education Commission in Krakow, Poland. Her research interests include the nature of ideology, the language of propaganda, newspeak and anti-newspeak, and oppositional discourse as resistance. Her dissertation focuses on the concepts of re-ideologization in contemporary Russia. During her stay at IERES, she will be conducting research on a project entitled Philosophical Narratives in Contemporary Russian Ideology: Toward a Deconstruction of Ideological Discourse. The project focuses on identifying and analyzing philosophical narratives in Russian ideological discourse. It aims to deconstruct ideological discourse and determine how cultural heritage is distorted and usurped by ideologues. She is the author of papers on the usurpation of discourses of Otherness in Russia, the problem of enemy images in Russian ideological rhetoric, and Russian newspeak and anti-newspeak.

Uliana Movchan, Visiting Scholar
Autonomy of the Subnational Level in the Neopatrimonial States: The Case of Ukraine

Uliana Movchan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science in V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and an expert at the European Expert Association (Kyiv). Her research interests concern the issues of institutional design, peace-building, Ukrainian political system, patronal politics, and power-sharing. She was a Fulbright visiting postgraduate student at the University of California, San Diego and held junior visiting fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) and at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto (funded by Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies). During her stay at the IERES Uliana Movchan worked on a project titled “Power-sharing in the Ukrainian Neopatrimonial State,” which explored types of power-sharing and their possible application to the Ukrainian political system. During her stay at IERES, Dr. Movchan conducted a research project called Power-sharing in the Ukrainian Neopatrimonial State: Coexistence or Incompatibility?

Pavlo Smytsyuk, Visiting Scholar
The Russo-Ukrainian War and Religious Actors: Preparing for Peace 

Pavlo Smytsnyuk is a Ukrainian scholar of religion. He specializes in political theology, modern Greek and Slavic Orthodoxy, religious nationalism and peacebuilding. From 2022-2024 Pavlo was a Seeger O’Boyle Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University. Prior to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Pavlo served as the Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies and a Senior Lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. Pavlo has published on issues such as comparative theology, ecumenical dialogue, as well as religious approaches to tolerance, war, and the ecological crisis. Since 2021, he has been a member of the State Department’s Advisory Council of Religions and Ethnicities of Ukraine, and has led a number of international projects. Pavlo studied philosophy and theology in Rome, Athens and St Petersburg and holds a Doctorate from the University Oxford.

Sandis Sraders, Visiting Scholar
Digital Transformation and Security of Small Baltic States

Sandis Sraders is a researcher and lecturer at the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia on Russian military and strategic studies. He is also MA Program Director at the Latvian National Defence Academy in Riga, Latvia. He has served as Secretary General of the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation (LATO) from 2007 until 2014 and assumed the role of a Board Member of LATO since 2014. Dr. Sraders has been the project coordinator for the German Marshall Fund of the United States in the Baltic States (2013-2015). His responsibility was accumulating the intellectual capital for the Latvian Presidency at the EU Council in 2015. Dr. Sraders was responsible for expert selection and meetings as well as the final publication addressing the EU’s Eastern Partnership. One of his recent positions was Director of Strategic Projects, Sales, and Advertising at Latvijas Radio (2018–2019). Dr. Sraders academic interests include Russia foreign and security studies, US foreign policy, as well as role of small states in international affairs and the global political economy.

Cecilie Juul Stensrud, Visiting Scholar
Ambassador Robert D. Stuart Fellow

Cecilie Juul Stensrud is from Oslo, Norway and is the Ambassador Robert D. Stuart Fellow at IERES for the Fall 2024 semester. She is currently working as a Political Advisor on Foreign Affairs and Defense Policy for the Norwegian Centre Party Parliamentary Group. Cecilie holds a master’s degree in Geopolitics, Territory and Security from King’s College London and a bachelor’s degree in political science from NTNU. Cecilie has varied experience from the Norwegian Armed Forces, research, and diplomacy where she served as a Political Officer Trainee at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Cecilie seeks to continue to foster an interdisciplinary awareness of international relations and security policy in contemporary politics, especially focusing on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.

Non-Resident Scholars

Carter Johnson, Non-Resident Scholar
“Russia Today” or Russian “Longue-Duree”? What explains opinions in Russia’s neighborhood about Russia’s Responsibility in the War Against Ukraine?

Between 2012 and 2022, Carter Johnson was a faculty member at HSE University in Moscow; his academic research has been published in World Politics, International Security, Europe-Asia Studies, and the Washington Post, among others. In 2021 his book, Partition and Peace in Civil Wars, was published by Routledge; the book came out as paperback in 2023. Carter also serves as a Regional Director at American Councils for International Education, overseeing Russia, Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Mongolia. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Sang Kyung Lee, Non-Resident Scholar

Sang Kyung Lee’s research is primarily concerned with the social origins and consequences of economic and political crises. His recent projects explore the causal mechanisms underlying varying popular responses to sovereign debt crises and recession and the implications of the unprecedented surge of populism over the past few decades for the quality and stability of democratic governance in the long run.

Past Visiting Scholars

2019-2020 Visting Scholars

• Iakovos Michailidis, The Reconstruction of Greece after World War II: The Role of UNNRA
• Stefan Kaschube, Multi-National Corporations as Instruments in International Relations – the Role of American Extratteritorial Sanctions
• Per Ekman, Foreign Policy Strategies of Ukraine and Georgia
• Zarina Burkadze, Competing Foreign Influences and Domestic Coordination in Democratizing Georgie: EU, NATO, US, and Russia
• Bekzod Zakirov, From Market to the State: Politics of State Ownership in Kazakhstan and Russia 
• Irina Olimpieva, Russian Young People’s Perceptions of Corruption and the Resulting Influence on Political and Economic Behavior
• Liliya Karimova, By the Grace of God: Women, Islam, and Transformation in Russia
• Aisalkyn Botoeva, Emergence and Expansion of the Islamic Economy in Central Asia
• Derya Butuktanir Karacan, The Impact of Syrian Refugess in Hungary and Germany
• Emmanuel Dreyfus, Russian Defense Reforms Since 2008

2018-2019 Visiting Scholars

• Uchkun Dustov, Sino-American Relationship at the Beginning of the XXI Century
• Miguel Vazquez, New Regulatory Paradigms to Realize Engery Transitions in the European Union
• Daria Gritsenko, Sustainable Energy for the Arctic Regions
• Daniel Stahl, The Arms Trade and International Law in the 20th Century
• Emil Nasritdinov, Migration in Kyrgyzstan: Here, There and in Between

2017-2018 Visiting Scholars

• Stephen Crowley, The Other Russia: Labor Politics and the Putin Regime in Challenging Economic Times
• Nicolas Belorgey, Prospective Payments Systems and the Elderly: A Frano-American Comparison
• Elzbieta Olzacka, The Cultural Context of the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
• Gabor Csizmazia, The United States’ Security Relationship with Europe’s Eastern Flank
• Sielke Beata Kelner, US Human Rights Promotion in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania (1977-1989)
• Katerina Sokou, The US’s Role in the Greek Debt Crisis
• Lauren Woodard, Resettlement of Compatriots Program in Russia’s Far East