Through Professional Workshops, the Melikian Center is helping scholars develop a variety of valuable skills.
2023 Professional Workshop in Public Scholarship
The second Workshop in Public Scholarship was held by the Melikian Center in August 2023 with 14 graduate students, faculty, and other scholars gathering to work on multi-media stories to bring their research and knowledge to the broader public. Themes include issues related to indigenous Russia; borderland lives and livelihoods; colonial legacies; or civic activism and democratic expression.
Publications

Alexander McConnell
"Peace to the World": Lessons from the Soviet Antiwar Underground
digitalscholarship.umich.edu February 20, 2024

Tony Lin
Declaring Neutrality at the 2025 International Chopin Competition
jordanrussiacenter.org/blog October 7, 2025

Mikhail Svirin
The Great Symbolic War, or Why Felix Dzerzhinsky is Back
jordanrussiacenter.org October 4, 2023
2022 Professional Workshop in Public ScholarshipÂ
The Professional Workshop in Public Scholarship the Melikian Center hosted in September 2022 brought together ten graduate students and scholars from across the U.S., who share the interest of taking their knowledge public, to develop pieces to pitch as magazine articles, podcasts, K-12 lesson plans, short videos, and websites that drew from their particular regional expertise. Additional workshops are in the works to provide similar hands-on opportunities in digital and multi-media storytelling, as well as a adapting scholarly research to inform policy makers.
Publications

James Greene
Masons at the Palette: Masters and Apprentices in the Russian Empire
scottishrite.org March/April 2023

Michael Kiel
Perspectives | Global environmentalism as a peacemaker in the South Caucasus
eurasianet.com - March 3, 2023 -

Spenser Warren
Is Russia Preparing for a Nuclear Weapons Test?
nationalinterest.org - February 26, 2023

Anya Free
Alexander Nevsky of Russia, Reanimated and Repurposed
[with Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager] - wilsoncenter.org - October 27, 2022

Jacob Lassin
How Literature Became a Weapon in Russia's Culture Wars
zocalopublicsquare.org - August 1, 2022