Christmas greetings 2018

The Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies wishes you all relaxing and merry winter holidays!

The past year has been intense and exciting. Last winter our official home on Gamla torget 3 was renovated and we spent the whole spring term in temporary offices. This short-lived yet somewhat inconvenient “exile” was worth the result because at the end of June we moved back to the modern-looking, bright, fresh and welcoming Institute. Both common areas, staff offices and our wonderful library has received a substantial “face-lift”.

One of the most important achievements of the year has been a launch of a new Masters Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies. The program is unique in Sweden and Scandinavia as it offers the opportunity to study Russia and the post-Soviet region whilst learning Russian through intensive language courses. Taught entirely in English, it will be multidisciplinary in nature, incorporating several academic disciplines, including cultural studies, economics, history, international relations, law, political science and media studies. We are really looking forward to welcoming new students in August 2019!

During the year we have organized four international conferences including ‘Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern Europe and Russia since 1956’, our largest international conference to date. This conference, arranged over two days in September 2018, was co-hosted with the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) and attended by over 120 attendees to reflect on the changes in the region from Stalinist dictatorships to the very varied polities of contemporary Eastern Europe and Russia.

We have hosted 16 guest researchers in 2018 who came from a whole array of countries including Argentina, Latvia, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Ukraine, Japan, Moldova, Poland and the USA. We are accepting applications for the IRES Visiting Researcher Program 2019 until 31 January.

Our seminars have been well-attended with many interesting discussions between both academics and practitioners. Apart from our regular Tuesday Seminars, we have also launched a new mini series on Estonian Swedes. Hele Kiiman and Ingvar Svanberg, our colleagues in charge of this series, have managed to gather diverse audience on a monthly basis by inviting renowned scholars conducting research on the history, culture and language of Estonian Swedes.         

We will start the term on 22 January with a book launch of “The Politics of Poverty in Contemporary Russia” with our colleague Ann-Mari Sätre. The spring’s seminar program will be available on our website shortly.

We thank everyone for following, cooperating and supporting us throughout the year and look forward to the new beginnings in 2019!