Yale European and Eurasian Studies Graduate Student Conference

Panel I - Chair: Christina Oh, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: Kishwar Rizvi, Robert Lehman Professor in the History of Art, Islamic Art and Architecture, Yale University

• Jamil Alizada, MBA Student, Yale University, "Telegram as Civic Infrastructure: Rethinking Governance Framework for Channel Ecosystems"
• Alp Demiroglu, Master of Environmental Design Candidate, Yale University and Mauricio Meza, MBA Student, Yale University, "Corridors of Capital: Competing Systems of Financing and Worldmaking in Eurasia"
• Alex Fisher, PhD Student in History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton University, "Aisha-Bibi in tatters—or, a dressing down in Soviet Kazakhstan"
• Aliaksandr Shuba, PhD Candidate in History, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Germany), "Tracing the Forms of Censorship in the Soviet and State Socialist Architectural and Urbanistic Knowledge"

Panel II - Chair: Kamryn McDonald, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: Alice M. Miller, Lecturer in Law and Co-Director, Global Health Justice Partnership, Yale Law School

• Andrii Hrynko, University of Saskatchewan (Canada), "Precarious Reality, Humanitarian Rhetoric: A Critical Policy Analysis of Canada’s CUAET Program"
• Kamryn McDonald, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, "’I Don't Plan To Return Home’: Heteronationalist Sexual Violence as Policy Against Queer People in The Russo-Ukrainian War"
• Marina Perglová, PhD Candidate in Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University (Czech Republic), "Navigating Identity and Moral Boundaries: Young Russian Emigrants in Georgia"
• Mariia Sergeeva, PhD Student in Anthropology, Carleton University (Canada), "Imagining the Nation from the Border: Media, Affect, and Wartime Identity in Rostov-on-Don"

Panel III - Co-Chairs: Katrina Simanovska and Jake Waldinger, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: John E. Herbst, Senior Director, Atlantic Council and the former US Ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan

• Oleg Golishnikov, PhD Candidate in Political Science, Southern Illinois University, “Between Strategic Cooperation and Rivalry: Russia-China Relations in Central Asia”
• Katrina Simanovska, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, "Asymmetric Partnership or Unified Bloc? European Security Elite Perceptions of Russia-China Relations"
• Julia Lasiota, MA Student in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University, "Playing All Sides: Central Asia's Ideological Arbitrage in Great Power Competition"

Panel IV - Chair: Elizaveta (Liza) Brover, PhD Student in Economics, Yale University

Discussant: Sergei Antonov, Associate Professor of History, Yale University

• Elizaveta (Liza) Brover, PhD Student in Economics, Yale University, and Igor Kolesnikov, PhD Student in Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, "Selection and Sorting in the Early Communist Party of the Soviet Union"
• Agzam Niyazkhodjayev, PhD Candidate in Economics, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), "Cotton, Colonization & Development in Imperial Turkestan"
• Dr Roman Osharov, European Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, School of History, University College Dublin (Ireland), and Postdoctoral Associate, Faculty of History, University of Oxford (United Kingdom), "Manganese Mining and Environmental Change in Western Georgia under Russian rule, 1879-1917"
• Justin Reynier, MA student in Political Science, McGill University, "Explaining Democratic Claims in Authoritarian Labor Movements: Evidence from Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia"

Panel V - Chair: Vesta Burk, PhD Student in History, Brown University

Discussant: Andrei Kureichyk, Writer and Director, Neubauer Fellow and Slavic Literatures and Theatre Studies, University of Chicago

• Vesta Burk, PhD Student in History, Brown University, "Mury: The Mythical Baggage of a Transnational Anthem"
• Giovanna de Campos Mauro, PhD Student in Italian Studies, Yale University, "The multisensory perception of the divine: Dante’s Purgatorio and the Portuguese Bosco Deleitoso"
• Claudia Gioia, PhD Student in Literature, Södertörn University (Sweden), "Sweden Meets the Soviet Union: Perspectives on the First Congress of Soviet Writers"
• Madeleine Giaconia, PhD Student in the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, "Local Modernism, International Stage: The Ukrainian Section at the 1928 Venice Biennale"
• Meena Venkataramanan, JD Student, Yale Law School and PhD Student in English Literature, Brown University, "'That Indian Fellar': Indianness as Specter in Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners" 

Panel VI - Co-Chairs: Esin Nizamoglu and Rebeka Zvirbule, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: Marijeta Bozovic, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University

• Skyler Gluck, Columbia University, "Writing at the Edge of Rupture: Jewish Responses to the Collapse of Modernity in Stefan Zweig and Mihail Sebastian"
• Dr Ksenija Iljina, Senior Teaching Fellow, Baltic International Academy (Latvia), "Researching Memory under Geopolitical Pressure: Methodological Challenges of Qualitative Research with Russian-Speaking Communities in Latvia after 2022"
• Julia Kulon, PhD Student in Slavic Languages and Literatures (Polish track), University of Chicago, "Vehicles of Rupture: Speed, Wheelchairs, and the Disabled Body in Polish Futurism"
• Esin Nizamoglu, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, "No More Turks in Bulgaria: Recovering the Turkish Experience of the Belene Concentration Camp"
• Rebeka Zvirbule, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, "Multidirectional Postmemory in the Spotlight of War in Ukraine: Generation Z and the Soviet Deportations in Latvia" 

Panel VII - Chair: Saba Shukvani, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: Julie Mostov, Dean Emerita (2017-2025) and Professor of Liberal Studies, New York University

• Saba Shukvani, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, “Georgia’s Political Crisis and the Future of European Integration”
• Dobrina Trendafilova, MA Student in Global History and Global Studies, University of Vienna (Austria), "Anatomy of a Revolution: Bulgaria's Gen Z on the Frontline and the Crisis of Political Legitimacy"

Panel VIII - Chair: Christina Logvynyuk, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University

Discussant: Dr Olena Lennon, Practitioner In Residence of National Security,  University of New Haven

• Yana Balanchuk, MA Student in Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Regional Studies, Columbia University, "Informal Executive Centralization in Ukraine after 2019: Semi-Presidentialism, Single-Party Majority, and War"
• Diana Kuznetsova, MA Student in Intelligence and International Security, King's College London (United Kingdom), "How Russia Reads Its Neighbors: Soviet Intelligence Legacies and the Ukrainian Case"
• Charlie Sagner, MA Student in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University, "Umom Putina ne Ponyat’? Understanding Russian State Ideology with Natural Language Processing"
• Lydia Smith, European & Russian Studies MA Student, Yale University, "How Solid is Solidarity? Co-Ethnic Refugee Reception in Armenia, 2023- 2025"