Prokudin-Gorskii photo of the Emir of Bukhara, 1911, from the Library of Congress

Russian Studies Alumni

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  • Sarah Dicks '09 (New Castle, NH), is teaching English in Russia for Language Link

  • Sarah Sutter '09 (Hanover, Indiana) is pursuing a PhD in Slavic studies and ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan

  • Elizabeth Everson ’05 (Chilton, Wis.) entered graduate school at the University of Michigan to study Russian culture and Library Science.

  • Emily Baran ’04 (Wauwatosa, Wis.) is pursuing a PhD in the history department at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She won the year’s AAASS award for the best graduate student paper in Russian Studies.

  • Krista Goff ’04 (Renton, Wash.) is pursuing a PhD in history at the University of Michigan. Her specialization on the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and post-Stalinist nationality policies is a continuation of her Macalester honors project. She received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and conducted research in Russia and Azerbaijan.

  • Eric Scheufler ’03 (Arlington Heights, Ill.) won a U.S. English language teaching assistantship in Austria, managed by the Austrian Fulbright Commission, to teach in Austrian secondary schools. He is currently in graduate school at the University of Washington–Seattle.

  • Lewis Thompson '02 (Lincoln, Nebraska), participated in the ACM study abroad semester and graduated with a double major in RCEES and economics. He received a master's degree in economics at Saint Petersburg State University.

Owen Kohl

 

Owen Kohl '02 (Wellesley, MA) received a Watson Fellowship for the 2002-03 year to study the role of hip-hop as social commentary and a voice for minorities in postcolonial societies, including France, Senegal, Russia, Croatia and Mongolia. He continues this project in graduate school in anthropology at the University of Chicago.

Emilia Simeonova

 

Emilia Simeonova, class of 2002 (Targovishte, Bulgaria), is a graduate student in International Economics at Columbia University. She divides her time between a cozy apartment on the Upper West Side and visiting friends and family around the world.

Quinn Martin

After spending the summer following graduation as a gardener on St. Paul's Summit Avenue, Quinn Martin '02 (Woodstock, CT) bought a plane ticket to Russia and started a career as a journalist. He wrote for The Moscow Times, several on-line magazines that deal with Central and Eastern Europe, and magazines here in the States. His particular areas of interest, pursued at Macalester and abroad, include international relations, human rights and the media. Quinn completed a degree in public policy at Columbia University and currently publishes a magazine in Moscow.

 

Joy Ziegeweid, class of '01 (Arcadia, WI), was a Russian, Central and East European Studies major and spent a semester in Moscow on the Boston University program. After graduation, she worked as an editor for The Moscow Times. She completed a graduate degree in urban planning at the University of Michigan, lived in Moscow for several years and is now studying law at Columbia University. While in New York, she has been working with Russian-speaking victims of trafficking and domestic violence. She notes that while there is a large Russian community in the city, there is a shortage of Russian-speaking legal professionals.

Jake Rudnitsky

 

After having graduated in May, 1999, Jake Rudnitsky (Watertown, MA) returned to Russia and works for the expatriate newspaper, eXile. See his work and more at the website.

Elizabeth Eagen

 

Elizabeth Eagen '00 (Cinncinnati, OH) was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study Georgian identity questions, worked for the Human Rights Watch in New York, and is now in graduate school for public policy and Russian/Central and East European studies at the University of Michigan. Her work has taken her to Moscow, the Caucasus republic and Central Asia.

Kristin Hayden

Kristin Hayden '92 was a triple major in Russian, international studies, and Soviet and East European studies. She lived in the Russian House, assisted refugee children from the former Soviet Union at a St. Paul elementary school, and spent a semester studying in Moscow as the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse.

After graduation, her internship at the Foundation for Russian-American Cooperation in Seattle led to another internship at the newly opened Russian consulate in Seattle. That experience in turn helped her gain a job with a Seattle company, which then sent her to Moscow to develop and manage its Russian pharmaceutical business. She has since gone on to found OneWorld Now!, a two year global leadership program for high school youth.

"This was an amazing opportunity for a recent grad with no business or medical background. … Thank you, Macalester," wrote Hayden via email from London.

 

 

Rebecca Hanson '95 (Massapequa, NY), who majored in history and Russian area studies, earned a Master’s degree at Georgetown University and worked for the CIA and in the White House during the Clinton administration. She is currently pursuing a law degree at the University of Chicago.

Hanson says it was probably the language preparation she had at Mac as well as her experience of studying in St. Petersburg that helped her land a job as an analyst with the CIA.

 

David Brandenberger

David Brandenberger '92 (Appleton, WI) worked as a curricular consultant at Moscow State Linguistic University for a year; then entered Ph.D. program in Soviet history at Harvard; spent 1996-97 academic year ferreting through former Communist Party archives in Moscow; worked in Stalin's personal library and with Red Army files produced by the NKVD. Since receiving his Ph.D., he taught in the history departments of both Harvard and Yale, and is presently Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond. He is the author of National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity (2002), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (2006), Political Humor under Stalin: an Anthology of Unofficial Jokes and Anecdotes (2010), and the forthcoming Propaganda State: Stalinist Ideology, Terror and Political Indoctrination.

  • Greg Luloff ’99 (Southborough, Mass.) was a Peace Corps volunteer in Novosibirsk and subsequently completed a law degree at the Northwestern University Law School.

  • Rachel Green ’98 (Mercer Island, Wash.) enrolled in the PhD history program at the University of Chicago and is currently completing her dissertation on the adoption of orphans in post-war Russia.

  • Wendy Guyot ’97 (Portland, Ore.) completed her master’s at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. She is currently working for the International Rescue Committee in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia.
    Becky Shields ’96 (St. Peters, Mo.) completed her master’s in Russian literature at Moscow State University and enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin.

  • Heidi Lowrey Baines ’95 (Honolulu, Hawaii) spent the summer after graduation working on AIDS education in Moscow. She completed her MD at the University of Washington in 2002 and is currently a resident physician in family practice in Anchorage, Alaska.

  • Heidi Lowrey '95 (Honolulu, HI) continued working after graduation at a Moscow AIDS clinic where she had done an undergraduate internship. She has since finished medical school and works as a resident physician in Anchorage, AK.

  • Laura McCallister '94 (Roanoke, VA), wrote a senior thesis on health in St. Petersburg, and went on to receive a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She served as manager of a USAID project operating in Kazakhstan and Russia.

  • Jenny Abel '93 spent a year in Siberia in the region of Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, working for the U.S.-based Rural Enterprise Adaptation Program on sustainable farming; then spent two and a half years managing agricultural development projects in Russia and Senegal at Rodale Institute, a sustainable agriculture research and education organization in Pennsylvania. She has since earned a masters degree in food science from Penn State.

  • Jed Sunden '92 (New York, NY), traveled to Kiev, Ukraine for a post-graduate tour and has been the publisher of the Kyiv Post.

  • Ingrid Summers '91 (Bellingham, WA) received a full, five-year fellowship to study anthropology at Columbia University, and recently received an IREX fellowship for a year of dissertation research in the Kamchatka Peninsula.

  • Laura Adams '90 (Minneapolis, MN) received her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, during which she spent 10 months in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her research involves national holidays in post-Soviet Uzbekistan: how they express new and old identities, and how the Soviet experience fundamentally shaped the way Uzbekistan's cultural elites understand Uzbek national identity and culture. She was a guest speaker at the 2004 Central Asia Symposium at Macalester.