Insights

Writing. Convening. Teaching. Training. Modeling. Experimenting. Engaging. Across time zones and international boundaries, members of our community are at work. Our “Insights” gallery is a multimedia guide to intellectual life at the Davis Center.

Scholars gather at Harvard to explore the work, life, and impact of Georgian-born avant-garde icon Ilya Zdanevich. Famed for his book collaborations with the likes of Picasso and Miro, “Iliazd” wore many hats in his artistic life — designer for Coco Chanel among them.

During the U.N.’s annual convention on climate change in Baku next month, democracy’s defenders can hold the Azerbaijani regime accountable for its human rights violations, argues Davis Center alum Mike Smeltzer.

The Russo-Ukrainian war has brought about major geopolitical shifts and, with them, a crop of competing reform proposals across the former Soviet Union. A new Davis Center research initiative sets out to assess them.

Azerbaijan is trying to rebuild and resettle the territories it has retaken, alum Joshua Kucera writes — moving fastest in Karabakh, where infrastructure remains largely intact, but sweeping away signs of the enclave's Armenian legacy as it goes.

We’re delighted to welcome scholars from around the world to our campus community. Meet the in-residence visitors who will be joining the Davis Center this academic year.

The three-week residency allows a Georgian artist to engage with the Harvard community in the spring of 2025. Application deadline is Sept. 20.

Political scientist Masha Hedberg undertakes a comprehensive review of 25 proposals for peace in Ukraine. Weighing the trade-offs, she finds “an incremental approach may offer the most workable path forward.”

Bringing educational backgrounds ranging from philology to security studies and experience in the military, journalism, and think tanks, the REECA class of 2026 has come to campus!

Join us this fall as journalist and political scientist Yevgenia Albats brings her signature style to conversations with top academics and analysts, probing Russia's impact on international peace and stability.