SRAS Blog

Katarzyna Maniszewska is the long-time director of SRAS’ Security and Society in the Information Age program in Warsaw. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw and her research focuses on the history and development of political extremism and terrorism with particular emphasis on media coverage of terrorism. She completed postgraduate studies in Issues… Read More

Heather Rice has a long history of traveling, living, and working abroad. Now the Russian language coordinator and an assistant professor of instruction of Russian for the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, she recently took a trip to Uzbekistan to explore the possibilities for her students to study there. In the 47-minute conversation below,… Read More

David Galloway, Associate Professor of Russian Area Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has run multiple faculty-led programs with SRAS. He’s also often chosen more adventurous locations. For his very first faculty-led tour with SRAS, he eschewed the capitals to take his students to Irkutsk, Russia, in 2006. In 2023, he chose to take… Read More

Walter Denz founded Liden & Denz in St. Petersburg in 1992. He then expanded his language schools to Moscow, Irkutsk, and, most recently, Riga, Latvia. SRAS has, as of summer 2023, partnered with Liden & Denz in Riga to offer our students a unique new location for studying Russian. In the half-hour conversation below, Walter… Read More

Nathan Renard is a recent high school graduate of Friends School of Baltimore. As part of his senior year there, he participated in a faculty led study abroad experience to Kyrgyzstan organized by his Russian Instructor, Lee Roby, and SRAS. Nathan plans on intensively studying Korean for a year abroad before moving on to linguistics… Read More

Kat Lytkowski is currently majoring in STIA at Georgetown University in the US. STIA stands for “Science, Technology and International Affairs” and is a new major that “applies cutting-edge science to the world’s most pressing political, social and ethical issues.” It takes into account the multiple forces affecting international affairs today – from social media… Read More

Lee Roby of the Friends School of Baltimore led a group of her high school students to St. Petersburg, Russia every other year for 18 years. This faculty-led travel was, as she says, “a well-oiled machine” in introducing her students to Russian culture and immersing them into the Russian language. For the past three years,… Read More

The Slavic Department at Connecticut College has run course-based faculty-led travel abroad with SRAS six times since 2008. This has proved essential to their department-building efforts. These short, impactful experiences abroad can educate and excite students in ways that make them want to dig deeper and know more. Students who go abroad are more likely… Read More

Elena Varshavskaya graduated from university as a teacher of the English and German languages. She worked at the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum Department of Education for 20 years. She arrived to the US in 1996 and, after receiving her PhD degree in Art History, taught a wide variety of courses at the Rhode Island School… Read More