Letter from the workshop organizers

Welcome to the Graduate Methods Training Workshop!

This year, we are delighted to be hosting 13 PhD students and several faculty members from across the Social Sciences and history and from a number of universities across the United States—a logistical and financial challenge that simply would not have been possible without the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded the creation of the Russian Studies Workshop at the Russian East European Institute in 2016 with a mandate to promote the study of Russia in the social sciences by supporting graduate research and encouraging research collaboration. To meet these goals, over the last few years RSW has been hosting discussion panels; inviting diverse scholars from across the U.S., Europe, and Russia to IU to present their research and meet our students and faculty; providing logistical and financial support to Russia-focused conferences on campus and at IU’s Europe Gateway in Berlin; and supporting post-doctoral scholars and graduate students on our campus. But it’s the Graduate Methods Training Workshop: Focus on Russia that really captures the essence of RSW’s mandate: By helping break down the particular challenges of doing academic research in Russia, we hope to help make students’ time in the field more efficient and effective; by fostering a community of emerging social science and history scholars who study Russia, we hope to encourage an exchange of ideas and research with specialists as well as peers—the next generation of scholars to advance Russian studies.  

Thank you for joining us in this endeavor!

Workshop organizers,

Sarah D. Phillips, Anthropology, Indiana University
Tatiana Saburova, History, Indiana University