CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN
AFFAIRS REVIEW

Chloe is a recent BA/MA graduate of Modern and Medieval Languages (French, Russian and Polish) at the University of Cambridge. During her undergraduate studies, Chloe has been involved with the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics Baltics Program, studying how history continues to affect security policy in Lithuania. In addition to Polish and Russian cultural studies, Chloe’s research interests include determining how cultural/social identity impacts foreign and security policy in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the 21st century. She is currently working as a research assistant studying Putin and the Ukraine War at the Kings College London Department of War Studies. 

Noam is a History PhD student at the University of Cambridge, researching the transnational movement for free Soviet Jewish (refusenik) emigration in the late Cold War. She has a BA from Brown University in History and Russian and an MA from Tel Aviv University in International Relations, Security and Diplomacy. Her research interests include Cold War soft power, Soviet-American-Israeli relations, and the legacies of the Cold War and historical memory in present-day geopolitics. Noam has worked at several foreign policy think tanks and speaks English, Hebrew, Spanish, and Russian.

Sophia is a PhD Student in History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where she researches court dress and politics in the Holy Roman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Her research interests include artisans, making, and material culture in late medieval and Early Modern Central Europe. She has studied art history at Princeton University and the Courtauld Institute, and worked at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Charlie is a current MSt student in Modern European History at the University of Oxford. He was previously editor of the Oxford Review of Books, and is currently a Senior Editor at the Oxonian Review. His research interests broadly look at political ecologies, histories of empire and imperial interconnections, and broadly 19th century histories of Western and Central Europe.

Ava is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge, reading Russian and French. She is currently spending her year abroad studying in Paris and Kazakhstan, while writing a dissertation on Soviet nostalgia in Kazakhstan. Her research interests include identity in post-Soviet nations, the collapse of the USSR, and Putinism.

Emile comes from Lithuania and is a recent graduate of MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, currently working as an economist. Previously, Emile held research positions at the Peterloo Institute, and the Economics department at the University of Manchester. Her thematic interests are climate change, inequality, political economy, and development.

Justas is a Philosophy, Politics and Economics student at Oriel College, Oxford. Dividing his time between the UK, Lithuania, and Sweden, he is particularly interested in European affairs and EU policy developments. His thematic interests include new institutionalism, the political economy of contemporary welfare states, and issues of epistemology in political theory and practice.

Vita Raskeviciute, born and raised in Lithuania, is pursuing a master’s degree in European and Russian Studies at Yale University. She earned her B.A. in International Relations and Russian and East European Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Recipient of the prestigious Norman D. Palmer Prize for the Best Senior Thesis in International Relations, Vita’s research focused on the conditions propelling illiberal regimes, namely Belarus and Turkey, to utilize migration as a coercive tool. As a Wolf Humanities Undergraduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Vita explored the reconstruction of the national identity in post-Soviet Lithuania. Vita’s professional experience includes a summer traineeship at the European Parliament, where she focused on the political and civil society trajectories of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership countries. Her focus at Yale is on understanding divergent democratization outcomes in the post-Soviet space and the role of national ethos in International Relations.

Julian is a third-year PhD candidate in History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. He is currently researching inter-religious and intra-religious violence in the medieval Levant, with a focus on the destruction of sacred sites. As well as the history and politics of Eastern Europe more broadly, Julian is interested in linguistic and cultural minorities, devolution and power-sharing, and elections.

Turner is studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford. His research interests are peacekeeping, diplomatic mediation and strategic studies. Turner has previously been involved with international peace and security think tanks, and joined research expeditions focussing on Eastern Europe.

Lily is an undergraduate student of Russian and Spanish at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. Her interests lie in Russian cinema, literature and visual culture of the early 2000s.

Faith Martin is an undergraduate student of History and Russian at Trinity College, Cambridge. Her research interests include the music and visual culture, especially cinema, of post-Soviet and Yugosphere countries.

Krisha Mae works in global advocacy for an anti-trafficking NGO. She studied English and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley before earning her JD at USC Gould School of Law where she focused on international human rights. She has previously worked with humanitarian organizations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and California and is keen to explore intersections between human rights, storytelling, and the arts.