Lecturers and | Advisers

Mitchell Orenstein

Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University

Mitchell A. Orenstein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston and an associate of both the Center for European Studies and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.  Professor Orenstein is a scholar of international politics focusing on the political economy of transition in Central and Eastern Europe, pension privatization worldwide, and the role of policy paradigms in economic reform.  His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, international political economy, and global public policy, employing a problem-driven research approach based on asking big, policy-relevant questions and answering them through carefully designed, in-depth field research. 

Oxana Shevel

Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Tufts University

Professor Shevel's research and teaching focus on the post-Communist region surrounding Russia and issues such as nation- and state-building, the politics of citizenship and migration, memory politics, and the influence of international institutions on democratization. She is the author of "Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe" (Cambridge 2011), which examines how the politics of national identity and strategies of the UNHCR shape refugee admission policies in the post-Communist region, leading countries to be more or less receptive to refugees. The book received the 2012 American Association of Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) book prize. At present, Professor Shevel is working on a new book project - comparative study of the sources of citizenship policies in new post-Communist states. Articles based on this project were published inComparative Politics in 2009, and in Post-Soviet Affairs in 2012. Oxana Shevel's research has also appeared in the East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, Slavic Review, Political Science Quarterly, Nationality Papers, and in edited volumes.

Robert Legvold

Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University

Robert Legvold is Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, where he specialized in the international relations of the post-Soviet states. He was Director of The Harriman Institute, Columbia University, from 1986 to 1992. Prior to coming to Columbia in 1984, he served for six years as Senior Fellow and Director of the Soviet Studies Project at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. For most of the preceding decade, he was on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at Tufts University. He received his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1967. 2008-2010 he was project director for “Rethinking U.S. Policy toward Russia” at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2009-2012 he was director of the “Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative” sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chaired by Sam Nunn, Wolfgang Ischinger, and Igor Ivanov.


(Original biography from: Columbia University)