2017 Fellows
Christy M. Brandly
Christy M. Brandly is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago. She earned her BA in Political Science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a minor in Chinese. She previously attended UMBC, pursuing a major in Russian and a minor in International Relations. She has spent nearly 2 years in the Russian Far East, where she studied abroad in undergrad, later taught English, and conducted M.A. research with the aid of a Boren Fellowship in 2012.
Alex Brown
Alex Brown is a graduate student at GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington DC. At GW, Alex is pursuing an MA in European and Eurasian studies with projected graduation in May of 2018. In addition to his student responsibilities, Alex spent the most recent spring semester working as an intern with the Center for European Policy Analysis - a DC think tank focusing on transatlantic relations and security issues.
Marek Eby
Marek Eby is a third-year PhD student in the History Department at New York University, and holds an MA from the EURUS Institute at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). His doctoral research explores Soviet Central Asia during the Stalinist period, focusing on processes of state-building in general, and the development of public health systems in particular.
Matt Floyd
Matt Floyd is a student at Middlebury College studying in International Politics & Economics major with a focus in Russian. Matt spent two summers in Russia studying Russian language and culture, one on State Department scholarship and another with Yale University. In the spring of 2016, he interned with the State Department in the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, where he covered energy and security issues. Deloitte later hired him to stay in Georgia to work as an energy specialist on a USAID contracted project advising the Georgian government on energy sector reform.
Emma Claire Foley
Emma Claire Foley is a MA candidate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, currently writing her thesis on post-Soviet environmental policy in Ukraine and Belarus. A three-time FLAS Fellow, Emma graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, as well as in History.
Ian Gabriel
Ian Gabriel recently earned his Master’s from the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. His research is focused on the politics of development in the Russian Far East. For his capstone thesis, he evaluated Russia’s development policies for the Far East fisheries complex and the legacy of past reforms.
Brenda González
Brenda González hails from San Antonio, TX and is a recent Graduate from The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies program. During her tenure as a Graduate student her research focused mainly on comparative work between Mexico and the Soviet Union as well as the current political climate surrounding Russia and the US. Brenda will be spending next year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in the Siberian City of Tomsk.
Joe Haberman
Joe Haberman graduated from Yale University with a BA in Russian and East European Studies. His academic focus is on contemporary Ukrainian affairs, and he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the diplomatic history of the ongoing conflict in the Donbas. He will be spending the next year teaching English at Kherson State University in southern Ukraine on a Fulbright grant.
Harrison King
Harrison King is an incoming History PhD student at UC-Berkeley. He holds BA degrees in International Studies and Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies from Miami University and an MA in Comparative History from Central European University in Budapest. In 2016-17, he worked for the International Memorial Society while on the Alfa Fellowship Program in Moscow.
Nile Miller
Nile Miller is a rising second-year MA student of International Relations and Regional Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in Government with a minor in Russian. His primary areas of research interest include transnational civil society, U.S.-Russia relations, and Russian foreign policy.
Hanna Notte
Hanna Notte is completing her DPhil on Russian foreign policy at the University of Oxford, from where she received an MPhil in International Relations in 2014. Her doctoral research focuses on Russian cooperation with the US over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. She spent a year between 2015-2016 in Moscow with the Carnegie Moscow Center and the Institute of Oriental Studies. Hanna holds a BA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge. More recently, she has acted as a consultant on Russia for the Shaikh Group’s Syria Track 2 Dialogue Initiative and her work has been published in Middle East Policy.
Melissa Samarin
Melissa Samarin is a Political Science PhD student in Comparative Politics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Russian and Eurasian politics, regime development, and impact of nationalism on political outcomes. Melissa received her B.A. in International Relations from Whittier College and M.Sc. in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford.
Taylor Valley
Taylor Valley is a second-year Master’s Candidate at Harvard University in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, & Central Asia. She received a BA in Russian Studies and Political Science in 2016.