The Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies provides financial support for research and teaching initiatives through the Melikian Center’s Research Fund.
A call for applications to the Research Fund goes out to all affiliated graduate students and faculty each fall. All applications are reviewed by the Melikian Center’s Faculty Advisory Board.
Applications from graduate student affiliates are strongly encouraged and prioritized.
The Center’s reputation is built on the vitality and reach of affiliates’ scholarly work, and we will continue to provide all the assistance possible to advance affiliate research and reputation.
2022
In response to the call for applications in Fall 2021, we received 10 applications totaling $28,125 to support work proposed for the calendar year 2022. This reflects a growing and highly competitive application pool of faculty and graduate affiliates. We are grateful to the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Office of Global Engagement for providing additional funding to support this year’s awards, which total $14,745.
Cichopek- Gajraj, Anna
July 2022
In Transit: Postwar Journeys of Jewish and Polish Families from Poland (1940s-1950s).
Dr. Cichopek-Gajraj will conduct in the Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for a book project. This project is a social and family history that focuses on the displacement of ethnic Poles and Jews in western Europe and Latin America in the aftermath of World War II.
$1,110
Hanson, Margaret
April-May 2022
The Relationship between property seizures, protest, and civil society development in post- Karimov Uzbekistan.
Dr. Hanson will conduct interviews with property owners who have experienced a seizure, leaders, and participants in movements resisting those seizures, and journalists; and to apply supervised machine learning to social media posts to create and analyze a dataset on seizure, protests, and civil society development.
$2,635
Paulesc, Marie- Louise
Nov 2022
Arizona Romanian Film Festival,
Second Edition.
Dr. Paulesc has received funding to support the second edition of the Arizona Romanian Film Festival. The Festival aims to introduce people interested in the languages, societies, and geopolitics of East Europe, as well as film professionals and the larger public, to the newest productions of contemporary Romanian cinema.
$2,000
Genovese, Taylor
May-Oct 2022
The Historical and Empirical Linkages
between the Legacy of Russian Cosmism and the Constructed Secularity of Silicon Valley Technologists.
Genovese, a PhD candidate in the Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology program, hopes to conduct interviews and archival research. If travel is not feasible, he will translate an article by Alexander Bogdanov, "Between Man and Machine: About Taylor's System," which looks at Frederick Taylor's manufacturing methods from the early 20th century and compares them to neo-Taylorist methods in the 21st century. In addition, Genovese proposes to conduct editing, print-mastering, scoring, and coloring of a short film he shot in Ukraine in Fall 2021, Stones in Cold Water, which is a reflection on memory, hope, progress, and nostalgia.
$2,000
Lassin, Jacob
Jan-Dec 2022
Sacred Sites: Russian Orthodox Politics Online.
Dr. Lassin received funding to work with a research assistant on two book chapters: “Making Orthodoxy Cool” and “The Politics of Online Theology.”
$1,500
Palandjian, Garine
March-April 2022
Rethinking borders and identities in Armenian education for peaceful and sustainable development.
Palandjian, a PhD Candidate in Educational Policy and Evaluation, will use her funding for the editorial expenses of her dissertation, Rethinking borders and identities in Armenian education for peaceful and sustainable development.
$1,500
Sharaya, Liudmila
Summer 2022
The adaptation, and its limits, concerning first-wave Russian émigrés in Bulgaria and France during the interwar period.
Sharaya, a PhD student in SHPRS, received funding for travel to conduct archival research in France. The archival collections in France will be instrumental in covering such parts of Sharaya's dissertation as the socio-economic status of émigrés and their relationships with the local population in that country.
$2,000
Kenny, Michael
June-July 2022
The Eternal Kingdom: Catholic Conservatism, Croat Nationalism, and the Habsburg State Mission.
Dr. Kenny has received funding to conduct research in Vienna and Zagreb, where he will have access to primary sources to provide a deeper look into the worldviews of conservatives in the late Habsburg empire.