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.
Ivan Hristov, Visiting Scholar
Reuben Markham’s Concept of Totalitarianism
Dr. Ivan Hristov’s work focuses on Bulgarian literature 20th-21st century within a European context. He received his PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2009. His dissertation was dedicated to one of the most interesting and least-studied circles of modernist intellectuals from the 1920s: the Sagittarius Circle. Already here in his first book titled “The Sagittarius Circle and the Idea of the Native” that explored the crisis of Bulgarian national identity after the First World War, he touched upon some aspects of totalitarianism. He showed how fragile the democratic tradition was in Bulgaria and how, after the civil war of 1925, totalitarianism began to gain traction in Bulgarian society and liberal democracy became increasingly vulnerable.
Expanding his scientific capacity, Hristov turned to the problem of totalitarianism, which reached its climax during the Second World War. He wrote a series of articles that examined the relationship between modernism and different types of totalitarian ideologies. His contributions in this respect include publications on the social transformations carried out by the then-new social media such as radio, cinema and the poster, his articles on the relationship between modernist and social realist writers, on the rehabilitation of modernism in Bulgaria in the 1970s, and on Bulgarian poetry of the 1980s and modernism. Thanks to the American Research Center in Sofia Fellowship for Southeast European Scholars, which Dr. Hristov won in 2015, he was able to conceptualize and lay the groundwork for his second monographic study. In 2022, the resulting work “Bulgarian Literary Modernism: The Problem of Time and Identity” was published. In this book he carefully traces the origins, rise and decline of communist totalitarianism in Bulgaria from the 1920s to the 1980s. In it he shows how media such as radio and film helped to amplify totalitarian movements and led to the loss of the individual self and the collapse of liberal democracy. Hristov carefully and thoroughly presents an account of how modernism was gradually rehabilitated in Bulgarian literature in the 1970s and even began to influence the literary processes of the 1980s. Dr. Ivan Hristov is the author also of over thirty articles within the field of Bulgarian literary modernism and postmodernism. He currently works as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Ivan Hristov’s Fulbright project “Reuben Markham’s Concept of Totalitarianism” at George Washington University will contribute not only to the promotion and rehabilitation of the importance that Markham has for Bulgarian and European history and culture, but also will achieve a more detailed picture and improve the conceptual clarity of the term “totalitarianism,” something that is extremely important for contemporary Bulgarian society.
Volodymyr Kulyk, Visiting Scholar
The Impact of the Prolonged War on National Identity and Language Use in Ukraine
Volodymyr Kulyk is a Head Research Fellow, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He has taught at Columbia, Stanford and Yale Universities, Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Ukrainian Catholic University as well as having research fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Woodrow Wilson Center, University College London, University of Alberta and other Western scholarly institutions. Since 2013, he serves as Ukraine’s representative in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. His research fields include the politics of language, memory and identity in contemporary Ukraine, media and discourse studies, on which he has widely published in Ukrainian and Western journals and collected volumes. Dr. Kulyk is the author of three books, the latest being Dyskurs ukraїnskykh medii: identychnosti, ideolohiї, vladni stosunky (The Ukrainian Media Discourse: Identities, Ideologies, Power Relations; Kyiv: Krytyka, 2010). He has also edited two collected volumes published in Ukraine and two special issues of Western academic journals.
Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva, Visiting Scholar
Changes in the Social Structure of Russian Society Amidst the War Conflict
Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva is the founder and director of the research center Minority Report, which she has led for more than ten years. In 2023, in recognition of its social initiatives and the significant outcomes achieved—such as amendments to several federal laws and regulatory acts—the research center was granted consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
She holds an M.S. in Political Science from Lomonosov Moscow State University and an M.S. in Finance and Credit from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Global Commerce and Policy at George Mason University and is a fellow of the Graduate Scholar program at the Mercatus Center at GMU.
Maria Lipman, Visiting Scholar
State-Society Relations in Putin’s Russia After the Invasion of Ukraine
Maria Lipman is a scholar, journalist, and commentator whose work focuses on state-society relations, media, and the politics of history and ideas in Russia. She has edited, co-edited, and contributed chapters to collected volumes on Russia and has held editorial positions in various Russian and English-language publications since 1995. From 2003 to 2014, she was an associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Lipman has also contributed extensively to both Russian and U.S. media, including a long-running op-ed column on Russia for The Washington Post (2001–2011), a blog for The New Yorker online (2012–2017), and articles for Foreign Affairs, where she has been writing capsule reviews of books on Russia and Eastern Europe since 2021. In academia, she taught courses on contemporary Russia at Indiana University and Grinnell College between 2017 and 2019.
Tetyana Malyarenko, Visiting Scholar
How Wars End: Challenges and Prospects for Mediation in the Russian Ukrainian War
Tetyana Malyarenko is a Professor of International Security and Jean Monnet Professor of European Security at the National University Odesa Law Academy, Ukraine, and Non-resident Fellow at the Uppsala Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Sweden. She is the founder and director of the Ukrainian Institute for Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution, a Ukrainian think tank aiming to promote interdisciplinary research, research-led teaching, and evidence-based advice for policy-makers on crisis management and conflict resolution in Ukraine and beyond. Her main research areas include the societal and economic aspects of security in states in transition, human security and good governance, and social conflicts and civil wars. She was previously the recipient of a Fulbright-Kennan Institute Research Grant, “In Search of Peace: Improving Conflict Prevention and Response Policies,” October 2013–February 2014.
Ibrahim Muradov, Visiting Scholar
Ukraine’s Resistance, Trump’s Strategy, and the Shifting Global Order: A Defensive Structural Realist Perspective
Ibrahim Muradov is a political scientist specializing in Eurasian politics, international security, and the Russia–Ukraine war. He is currently a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. From 2020 to 2024, he taught at Dnipro University of Technology in Ukraine, where he continued his research and teaching until he was displaced by Russia’s full-scale invasion. His scholarship examines Russia’s wars in Ukraine, hybrid warfare, and the shifting dynamics of the post-Soviet space, with particular attention to Ukraine’s agency in resisting Russian aggression. His recent article, Disrupting the Narrative: Ukrainian Agency in Resisting Russia and Winning Western Support, was published in Europe-Asia Studies. Dr. Muradov received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, in 2019, with a dissertation titled The Donbas Conflict as a Form of Hybrid Warfare: A Neoclassical Analysis. He also holds an M.A. in Eurasian Studies from METU, where his dissertation focused on The Competition Between the European Union and the Russian Federation Over the South Caucasus and Its Implications. Originally from the Ahiska Turk community exiled by Stalin, he lived and worked in Ukraine until 2022. In Canada, he continues to teach and publish actively while contributing to public and academic discussions on Ukraine and Eurasia
Camelia Nistor, Visiting Scholar
Innovative Communication Strategies in US Public Affairs and Lobbying
Camelia Nistor is a PhD University Lecturer at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, and at United Institute in Brussels. She has a PhD Degree in International Relations and European Studies with a thesis on EU Lobbying. Camelia graduated from Babeș-Bolyai University, and Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, France, she has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Communication Sciences, also two Master’s Degrees in International Relations. Camelia lived in Brussels for about 15 years, and gained professional expertise in EU Communication, EU Public Affairs and Lobbying. She worked for 5 years at the Secretariat General of the European Commission, and had collaborations with the European Parliament, EU Affairs consultancies, also with the EU’s Office of the Public Affairs Council, headquartered in Washington D.C.
Yulia Sineokaya, Visiting Scholar
The Split in the Russian Philosophical Community and the Emergence of Sovereign Philosophy
Yulia Sineokaya is a lecturer and researcher in the history of Russian and European philosophy (XIX-XXI centuries). Her recent research concentrates on philosophical thought in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, Russian philosophy of war, intellectual freedom, philosophical generations, state-civilisation, and Russian Nietzscheism. Prior to 2022, she worked as Deputy Director and Head of the Department of History of Western Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is the Founder and President of the Association (Paris, 2023) and the author of more than 180 research articles, a monograph entitled Three Images of Nietzsche in Russian Culture (2008), and editor of 11 international collective works (Philosophical Emanations of Love (2018), Nietzsche Today (2019), Responses: Philosophical Conversations (2021), Philosophical Generations (2022), etc.) and two textbooks. She was awarded the Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2017) for excellence in the popularisation of academic philosophy. She is an associate member of the Centre for the History of Modern Philosophy at Paris 1 Sorbonne Pantheon University and the Europe-Eurasia Research Centre at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (Paris).
Non-Resident Scholars
Gabriela Argüello, Non-resident Scholar
Security of Underwater Critical Maritime Infrastructure in Europe
Gabriela Argüello, BA, LL.M, LL.D, is an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Law in the University of Gothenburg. She is also a research fellow funded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Gabriela specializes in the law of the sea and is affiliated with both the Centre for Collective Action Research (CeCAR) and the Centre for Sea and Society. Gabriela earned her Maritime and Transport Law doctorate from the University of Gothenburg. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary global environmental challenges related to the ocean, particularly those involving multi-scale actors such as states, international organizations, industries, and civil society organizations. She has conducted research on a range of topics, including waste management, pesticides, ship recycling, ship-source pollution, ocean governance, and energy transitions. In addition to her academic work, Gabriela is a member of the European Marine Board Working Group on Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (2024–2026) and is a Fulbright Arctic Initiative IV Scholar (2024–2026).
Aikerim Bektemirova, Non-resident Scholar
Between Autonomy and Control: The Evolution of the Kazakhstani Academy of Sciences in the Post-Soviet Era
Aikerim Bektemirova is a researcher from Kazakhstan who recently completed her PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge. Before that, she earned an MPhil in Education, Globalisation, and International Development from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and International Relations from Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Her research interests lie at the intersection of education, politics, and sociology, with a particular focus on knowledge production in higher education institutions.
Dusan Bozalka, Non-resident 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.
Esuna Dugarova, Non-resident Scholar
The Cost-of-living Crisis and Policy Responses in Eurasia through a Gender Lens
Esuna Dugarova is an interdisciplinary scholar and policy expert specializing in public policy, socio-economic development, and gender equality globally, with a particular focus on Eurasia. With extensive experience in international organizations and academia—including the UN, World Bank, European Commission, and Columbia University—she has led global projects, policy analysis, and rigorous assessments, providing evidence-based insights that shaped decision-making. In addition, Esuna has conducted primary research on the interplay between identity, power, and agency through the lens of the transnational Buryat-Mongolian community and founded the Global Buryat Academy to sustain its language and culture. Holding a PhD from Cambridge University, Esuna has authored over 50 publications and knows 7 languages, including Mongolian, Chinese, Russian, and French.
Reijer Pieter Hendrikse, Non-resident Scholar
Back to the Illiberal Future? From Habsburg to MAGA Court
Reijer Hendrikse is a non-resident fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program. His research interests are centered on the interfaces between corporations, business services, financial centers, and states, with a focus on finance, lawmaking, technology, and their political anchoring under (neo-)illiberalizing regimes in the US, China and Europe. Amongst others, he is currently investigating the financialization and monopolization of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures under the aegis of US Big Tech, and how these companies rely on the illiberal antics of the Trump Administration to shield and expand their global dominance.
Carter Johnson, Non-resident Scholar
From Inside or Outside the Homeland? Strategic Pathways to Power for Opposition Leaders in Authoritarian Regimes
Between 2012 and 2022, Carter Johnson was a faculty member at HSE University in Moscow; his academic research has been published in the academic journals World Politics, International Security, and Europe-Asia Studies, among others, as well as the Washington Post. In 2021 his book, Partition and Peace in Civil Wars, was published by Routledge; it was released as a paperback in 2023. Carter also serves as a Chief Strategy Officer and 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.
Jacob Ware, Non-resident Scholar
Combatting Youth Radicalization
Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he studies domestic and international terrorism and counterterrorism. Together with Bruce Hoffman, he is the author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, published in 2024 by Columbia University Press. He was previously a research associate for counterterrorism at CFR.
In addition to his work at CFR, Ware is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. Jacob was also a spring 2024 younger visiting fellow at the University of Oslo’s Center for Research on Extremism. He serves on the editorial boards for the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and the Irregular Warfare Initiative. His work has appeared in publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, National Interest, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal.
Ware holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown and an MA (Hons) in international relations and modern history from the University of St Andrews.
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
INSTITUTE FOR EUROPEAN, RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES
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