Lydia Smith

Lydia Smith (she/her) is a second-year MA student in the European & Russian Studies program and a Professional Development Fellow at the European Studies Council. Her research focuses on how nationalism and displacement interact in post-conflict settings, particularly in the South Caucasus and Eastern Europe. Lydia's MA thesis analyzes public opinion over time in Armenia towards refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh following the 2023 exodus, and how this case diverges from prior frameworks of refugee integration. She is interested in mixed-methods approaches to social science, including text-as-data, sentiment analysis, interview data, and large-n statistical analysis. 

Lydia has worked as a researcher at the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, a Fulbright grantee in Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria, and an English teacher in Joinville-en-Champagne, France. She graduated from the University of Virginia (summa cum laude), where her undergraduate thesis on the impact of border closures during the first wave of COVID-19 earned Highest Distinction.