Events

Are you looking to be in conversation with the world of Russian and Eurasian studies? You have come to the right place — pull up a seat.

Looking for a recording of a past event? Browse prior listings below, or see all of our event videos on our YouTube channel.

Event Format

Upcoming

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In person

Join the Program on Georgian Studies for a screening of "Will There Be a Theatre Up There?!" — a film about the impact of Stalinism on the people of Georgia — followed by a discussion with the director Nana Janelidze.

Professor, Ilia State University

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In person

Unlike centrally promulgated Soviet atheism, the atheism encountered in Central Asian languages was far more contradictory, often embracing Islam and denigrating it at the same time. This talk will chart the phenomenon's birth in the 1950s and its development as a body of literature in the 1960s.

Recording Available

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History, UNC Chapel Hill

Senior Fellow; Director, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center

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In person

Join the Program on Georgian Studies for a screening of "Liza Go On" — a controversial film on the 1992-1993 war in Georgia's Abkhazia region — and a subsequent discussion with film director Nana Janelidze.

Associate Professor, Head of the Memory Studies Center, Ilia State University

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In person

Deep inside Russia's forests, against the wishes of the authorities, 60-year-old Yuri Dmitriev searches for mass graves from Stalin’s Great Terror — until one day he is arrested and sentenced to 15 years. Following him closely, the film paints a shocking picture of the way the Russian state rewrites history and treats its citizens.

Filmmaker

John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

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In person

Join Davis Center fellow Malika Toqmadi for a discussion about the newest volume of The Global Encylopaedia of Informality.

Ph.D. Candidate, School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University College London (UCL)

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In person

Russian language competition for high school students. 

Associate Director, Davis Center

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In person

Drawing on social science literature on infrastructure and 15 years of research in Central Asia, Till Mostowlansky will discuss concepts that might prove useful in studying Ukraine from a long-term perspective. 

Research Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute

Director, Davis Center
Adjunct Professor of the History of Urban Form, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative

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In person

Join us for a film screening of Taylor Hackford's "White Nights” (1985). Post-screening discussion to be led by Dr. Ilya Vidrin.

 

 

Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

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In person

Irina Busygina will present the key arguments from her recently published book “Non-Democratic Federalism and Decentralization: A post-Soviet Perspective” (Routledge, November 2023, co-authored with Mikhail Filippov).

Recording Available

Independent Researcher

Executive Director, Davis Center

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In person

The Davis Center has hosted this colloquium since 1996, showcasing work in the field by students from Harvard, Wellesley, and Wheaton. We invite you to celebrate undergraduate research and engagement in the region. 

Executive Director, Davis Center

Director, Davis Center
Adjunct Professor of the History of Urban Form, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative

Visiting Professor of Government, Harvard University

Professor of Russian, Wellesley College

Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, Wheaton College

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In person

The Balet Polski Reprezentacyjny’s German tour provides new insight into the Second Polish Republic’s utilization of art and performance in its foreign affairs in the 1930s, and the precarity of identity in the Second Polish Republic’s national self-expression.

PhD candidate in Slavonic Studies at Clare College, University of Cambridge

John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

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In person

Professor Boris Lanin will discuss the Jewish destinies of Russian-language émigré writers of the Third and the Fourth waves of emigration.

Recording Available

Professor, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland

Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies; Boston College; Chair, Seminar on Russian and Eurasian Jewry, Davis Center

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In person

Emigrate or stay in Russia? The question so central to Russian intellectual discussions nowadays was also Anna Akhmatova’s dilemma one hundred years ago.

Professor Emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

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In person

"This Kind of Hope" follows Belarusian human rights activist and former ambassador Andrei Sannikov.

Belarusian Politician, Diplomat and Activist

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In person

Using recently declassified materials from Russian archives, historian Oleg Budnitskii examines atrocities committed by Red Army soldiers at home as well as abroad.

 

Fellow (2023-2024), National Humanities Center, North Carolina

George F. Baker III Professor of Russian Studies, Harvard University

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In person

Can this century's Central Asian leaders notch energy wins like their predecessors in a more challenging environment?

Recording Available

U.S. Ambassador (ret.)

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In person

Come hear more than 20 outstanding young scholars present on topics as diverse as energy, child care, migration, managed successions, and much, much more.

Executive Director, Davis Center

Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

U.S. Ambassador (ret.)

Senior Fellow; Director, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center

A.M. Candidate in Regional Studies—REECA

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In person

This talk will explore major developments that led to mass displacement, including the Central Asian revolt of 1916, civil war in 1917–23, Soviet reforms in the 1920s, and the Kazakh famine of 1930–33, while paying particular attention to settler colonial violence and the loss of Muslim sovereignties in Central Asia.

Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

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Online

This seminar will discuss the changing relations between the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea from 1949 through 1991 and the way these earlier relationships affect the close interactions between Russia, China, and North Korea today.

Recording Available

Senior Managing Director, Brock Securities

Director, Cold War Studies Project

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In person

This talk will consist of three parts: the impetus leading to the erection of the statue and the numerous hurdles that had to be overcome, its destruction during World War II and subsequent reconstruction, and its historical and symbolic significance since 1959, when Chopin concerts began to take place around the statue.

Assistant Professor of the Practice, Russian and Slavic Studies, Boston College

Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Boston

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In person

This seminar will discuss relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR after the end of World War II.

Recording Available

Scholar-in-Residence, Philosophy Department, Duquesne University; Cultural Outreach Coordinator, Serb National Federation

Professor of International Law and International Relations, Institute for Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Director, Cold War Studies Project

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In person

With evidence from Kosovo, Serbia, and North Macedonia, this seminar will explore several issues, including protest behavior and state bureaucracies in postwar Balkan countries.

Recording Available

Director of the Democracy and Governance Program and assistant professor of government

Director, Cold War Studies Project

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In person

Two nights of performance draw on censored Soviet-era texts by iconic singer-songwriters Okudzhava and Vysotsky to explore intergenerational trauma in refugee experience and illuminate the sublime social power of poetic practices.

Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

Singer/Songwriter

Dance-Theater Artist

Scholar of Russian Literature and Culture

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In person

This workshop, hosted by the Global Studies Outreach Committee at Harvard University, will be offered in person on Harvard's Cambridge Campus July 29-August 1, 2024. 

Associate Director, Davis Center

Program Coordinator, Educator Outreach and Program on Georgian Studies

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Online

This seminar will discuss the origins of Uzbek popular music, including where it comes from and how it developed.

Recording Available

Associate Professor, Botir Zokirov National Institute of Estrada Art

Member of Union of Composers of Uzbekistan

Ph.D. Candidate in History, Harvard University

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Join us for a screening of the documentary 'Two Poets and a River.' The film explores the lives and musical poetry of the two most prominent and innovative Wakhi musicians in Central and South Asia: Qurbonsho in Tajikistan and Daulatsho in Afghanistan. Afterward, join the Q&A with film director and Harvard professor Richard K. Wolf and Afghan musician Dawood Pazhman.

Professor of Music and South Asian Studies, Harvard University

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In person

Join the Program on Georgian Studies for a screening of the iconic glasnost-era film "Repentance" and a subsequent discussion with assistant director and screenwriter Nana Janelidze. 

Director, Program on Georgian Studies, Harvard University; Professor of Modern Georgian History, Ilia State University, Tbilisi

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In person

This seminar will explore East Germany's policy implementation under the framework of both “horizontal” analysis ando top-down assessments.

Recording Available

Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Malmö University, Sweden

Director, Cold War Studies Project

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In person

Two years into Russia's war against Ukraine, military analyst Pavel Luzin will consider what we know about Moscow's troop numbers, recruitment, officer corps, mercenaries, and more.

Recording Available

Visiting Scholar, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Executive Director, Davis Center