Recently, our center hosted a lecture by sociologist Veronica Kostenko on the results of a study on anti-war emigration from Russia to Armenia as part of the OutRush project.

A journalist Anastasia Karkotskaya from the Epress.am newspaper, who was present at the meeting, published an article that covers in detail the key findings of the study, how the immigration flow has changed since February 2022, and what awaits Russian emigrants in Armenia.

The full article is available at the link: ru / arm

Experimental Approach to Opinion Polls in Russia: Evidence from the Online Panel Study

Public lecture | November 15, 19:00

Margarita Zavadskaya
Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Affiliate Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

The lecture will discuss shifts in Russian public opinion amid the war in Ukraine, based on data from the PROPA panel study — a large-scale survey that considers Russians’ political, economic, and historical perspectives, as well as their media preferences.

You can review the articles published as part of this study at the following link.

PROPA employs experimental survey methods (list experiments, endorsement experiments, and visual vignette experiments) to address biases, elicit more authentic responses on sensitive issues, and gain a better understanding of how public opinion functions in authoritarian contexts.

All data from the first wave of the study is publicly available.

Registration link.

Kind reminder,
today at 19:00 at YCIE, Charents 31/4.

Open call for YCIE second Summer School!

Ready to dive deep into the dynamics of belonging in Eurasia? Our second summer school in the “Societies and Cultures Torn Apart” series invites graduate students and advanced undergraduates to explore “Being Apart – Being a Part: Practices and Theories of Belonging”.

Join us to discuss how individuals, groups, and institutions shaped shared contexts and experiences during the Soviet era and beyond. This program offers lectures, seminars, and hands-on workshops on academic writing and ethnographic fieldwork, all led by leading scholars in the field.

To learn more about the summer school's program, thematic sections, list of instructors, and scholarship opportunities, visit the summer school website via link.

🗓 Dates: June 15–29, 2025

📍Location: Armenia

✏️ Application Deadline: January 20, 2025

📝 Applications are now open! Apply here: https://summerschool.yerevancenter.org

Become part of this engaging intellectual exchange!

YCIE is Hiring an Executive Director

Join the Yerevan Center for International Education to lead operations, manage a dynamic team, and advance international education.

Requirements:

- Fluent in Armenian, English and Russian.
- Proven leadership skills and management experience (academic preferred).
- Knowledge of Armenian legislation.
- Proficiency in financial planning, budget oversight and reporting.

📍 Yerevan-based | 💼 Competitive salary and benefits

📅 To apply, send your CV and cover letter to info@yerevancenter.org.

Details here: https://yerevancenter.org/executive-director-ycie/

YCIE is launching a podcast series "Now in Russian" ("А теперь по-русски")!

This is a new format for us, where Russian-speaking scientists discuss in Russian the topics they write about in other languages, share insights into their research projects, and talk about their big dreams as well as small pleasures.

We're thrilled to present the first episode: Elena Davydova talks about her fieldwork in Chukotka and her work at the University of Vienna in the project “InfraNorth. Building Arctic Futures. Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Northern Communities”.

Watch on YouTube and stay tuned for updates!

Jeanne Kormina’s article “‘The church should know its place’: The passions and the interests of urban struggle in post-atheist Russia” was selected as one of two winners of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture’s 2024 Best Article Prize!

In her case study of the protests in St. Petersburg in the winter and spring of 2017 evoked by the authorities’ diktat to transfer St. Isaac’s Cathedral from state ownership to church ownership, Kormina, an expert on post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy, brings into focus the tensions over the control of cultural property that can arise in the post-Soviet era within a less than “true secular state” with a decidedly “distinctive church-state nexus.”

Congratulations to Jeanne Kormina, Director of YCIE

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ghan20/32/5

Today, we would like to share with you the story of a wonderful library science specialist who, to the delight of YCIE, volunteered with us — Erin Egan, originally from Essex, Vermont.

Erin moved from St. Petersburg, Russia to Yerevan, Armenia in March 2022, establishing YCIE Library, which boasts a well-curated collection primarily in English and Russian.

She also volunteered at the American Corner of the Yerevan Public Library, taught English and organized lecture series.

In this interview she tells about her deep-rooted passion for libraries, starting from childhood volunteering, mentions her PhD-thesis on National libraries of the former Soviet Union, focusing on Russia, Armenia, Estonia, and Kazakhstan, highlighting their modernization after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Youtube link

Academics and activists who received Hrant Dink Foundation's Travel Grant in 2023 is starting a discussion club at YCIE on topics around problematic issues that we face and complex experience that we have.

For many of us, addressing our identities is crucial in establishing a solid foundation for our personality and sense of self. But this process might include reflecting upon traumatic past or other complex facets of our ethnocultural group's experience. We strive to create an open and engaging space for reflection, dialogue, and learning.

The discussion club will explore a variety of important issues, including identity, feeling of belonging, impact of a traumatic past on personal identity, family histories and their influence on us, nationalism and its effect on self-perception.

The idea behind the first series meetings was inspired by the articles of Hrant Dink — a prominent Turkish-Armenian intellectual, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, journalist, and columnist. We will read his articles and share our thoughts and emotions that they raise.

We invite you to join us in this open dialogue!

🗓 Date: Tuesday, December 17, 19:30
📍 Location: YCIE, Charents str. 31/4
🔗 Event link

In the 2nd episode of our podcast "Now in Russian!" ("А теперь по-русски!"), we spoke with social anthropologist Asya Karaseva.

Asya is a PhD student at the universities of Tartu and Hamburg. Her research interests include the anthropology of modernity, infrastructure, and time, with a focus on eventfulness. Her regional specialization is Siberia and the Russian Arctic.

We’d like to remind you that "Now in Russian!" ("А теперь по-русски!") is a podcast series where Russian-speaking scientists discuss in Russian the topics they write about in other languages, share insights into their research projects, and talk about their big dreams as well as small pleasures.

Watch on YouTube and stay tuned for updates!

Kind reminder,
today at 19:30 at YCIE, Charents 31/4.