Student Research

Summer Research

Laura Howells '20 — Bowdoin Public Service Fellowship (Summer 2019)

Thanks to the generous support of the Bowdoin Public Service Fellowship, in summer 2019 I served as a research assistant to two scholars in our nation's capital. Under the guidance of Professor and Co-Director of Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS) at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES), I designed and executed a project analyzing the Russian Presidential Grant Fund and its legislative, social, and fiscal context. I scraped and synthesized large amounts of data from the federal grant’s webpage to bolster my qualitative research with empirical data. Professor Laruelle and I are in the process of submitting a co-authored paper to several top journals in the post-soviet field.

I also conducted research under the mentorship of Brookings Institution fellow Alina Polyakova, who specializes in disinformation, post-soviet politics, and emerging technology. In this role I provided research support for publications and Congressional testimonies, monitored the Russian media, cyber operations, and technology policy, and produced succinct yet detail-oriented memos on relevant developments. I used my Russian language to conduct research and track important updates on the Russian web (RuNet).

These summer opportunities were enriching in so many ways; they allowed me to learn more about Russia, use my language skills in research, and understand how to execute and submit articles to academic journals. It was eye-opening to see how professionals use their Russian language skills in practice.

Laura Howells '20 — Martha Reed Coles Research Fellowship Recipient (Summer 2018)

This past summer (2018), I conducted research and completed a substantial paper exploring the relationship between the Russian state and civil society using women’s nongovernment organizations (NGOs) as a case study. Using recent federal grant data and various secondary sources, the paper portrays the current state of Russian civil society through the lens of women’s groups. To understand contemporary conditions of ever-changing civil society, I examine evolving funding sources, legislation, and social principles in Russia.

Read an article by Laura Howells about her research.

Zoe Shamis '19 — Bowdoin Faculty Scholarship (Summer 2018)

This past summer I pursued a summer research project titled “Development and Perceptions of Human Rights and International Law in Post-Communist Eastern Europe.”  I studied the development of human rights norms since the 1990s, particularly the role of international versus grassroots organizations. With funding from a Bowdoin Faculty Scholarship, I traveled to Ukraine, Poland, Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro where I looked at the impact of recent human rights crises and perceptions of international governing bodies and human rights organizations. This research will contribute to a related year-long honors project in International Relations.

Zoe Shamis Trip Video

Honors Theses

Stephen Pastoriza ’19: Portraits Across Mediums: The Representation of Women in the Works of Ivan Turgenev and Alexei Kharlamov

My thesis project explores the connection between two nineteenth-century Russians: the author Ivan Turgenev and the painter Alexei Kharlamov. In researching their works created during the time both spent living in Paris, I consider whether the ideas Turgenev and Kharlamov exchanged about the nature and purpose of their art were influential on their respective modes of representing women. The central goal of this cross-medium analysis is to illuminate and conceptualize the role of the female figure in both of these artists’ work: is it a center of physical beauty and moral strength? A locus of national identity and pride? Do representations of women in Turgenev’s and Kharlamov’s works belong to some sort of Russian realism that was distinct from realism in the West? In addition to unearthing what appears to be a relatively unstudied connection between Kharlamov and Turgenev, I hope my research will add to the existing scholarship that focuses on prominent relationships among Russian authors and artists, such as Tolstoy and Repin or Chekhov and Levitan, and that it will reveal fruitful new paths of inquiry that bring the literary and visual arts of nineteenth-century Russia closer together.