Faculty Associates

GW-based Faculty Associates

Leo Chalupa

Leo Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American Neuropsychologist who serves as Vice President for Research and is a Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at George Washington University. He was previously a Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology at the University of California, Davis, and Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, where he also served as the Director of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Interim Dean of the College of Biological Sciences.

Henry Hale

Henry Hale is the Director of the Petrach Program on Ukraine. He is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, and his most recent books are The Zelensky Effect (Hurst/Oxford University Press 2022, co-authored with Olga Onuch) and Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2015). Prominent themes in his research include ethnic politics, political regimes, voting behavior, the public opinion dimension of international relations, and politics in post-Soviet countries, where he has conducted extensive field research.

Robert Orttung

Robert Orttung is Professor of Sustainability and International Affairs and Research Director for the Sustainability Institute at the George Washington University. Orttung is the lead PI for two National Science Foundation Navigating the New Arctic projects: Measuring Urban Sustainability in Transition and Arctic Cruise Ship Tourism. He also contributes to several other Arctic-related projects. He is the editor of Urban Sustainability in the Arctic: Measuring Progress in Circumpolar Cities (NY: Berghahn, 2020). He has published extensively on Arctic topics and issues related to the development of Ukraine and Russia’s political systems. Orttung received a B.A. in Russian Studies from Stanford University and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Michelle Kelso

Michelle Kelso is Director of Human Services & Social Justice and Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at The George Washington University. Professor Kelso’s research focuses primarily on the fate of the Roma during the Holocaust in Romania and Ukraine. Social justice and the exploration of (in)equalities are the foundations of her research. She is particularly interested in the intersection of memory, marginalization, and contemporary education policy. With a strong belief in public sociology, Dr. Kelso integrates her scholarship with public discussions and policy programming. In 2017, she began a research project focusing on memory and commemoration of the Holocaust in post-Soviet spaces, with a concentration on Ukraine. Dr. Kelso has extensive international experience both as a researcher and consultant. She consulted for the Council of Europe, USAID, non-profits, Holocaust compensation programs, and the Romanian government. She has been the recipient of several prestigious national awards, including a Fulbright Core Fellowship to Romania in 2016-17, as well as two prior Fulbright grants in 2004 and 1994.

Erwan Lagadec

Erwan Lagadec is Associate Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES), where he leads Elliott School programs on EU and NATO affairs as the head of IERES' Transatlantic Program. He is the Director of IERES’ European Union “Jean-Monnet” Center of Excellence, and he leads a Memorandum of Understanding between the Elliott School and NATO’s Allied Command Transformation. He teaches classes on the EU, NATO, and Western policy towards Russia, all of which focus heavily on relations with Ukraine and lessons from Ukraine's resistance against Russian aggression. He is also a nonresident senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and its Europe Program. He was previously affiliated with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy; France’s Saint-Cyr Military Academy (he is a former officer in the French Navy Reserve); Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; the University of Virginia-Charlottesville; Tulane University; Harvard University; MIT; the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A French-U.S. dual citizen, he holds a D.Phil. in History from the University of Oxford.

Sean R. Roberts

Sean R. Roberts is a Professor in the Practice of International Affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and, since 2008, has been Director of the School’s International Development Studies program. Dr. Roberts is an anthropologist who studies issues of democracy, governance, and human rights in Eurasia. His primary academic research focus has been on Central Asia and the Uyghur people of China, and he is the author of The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, 2020). However, he has also conducted substantial applied research throughout Eurasia for international development agencies and NGOs, including significant development-related applied research in Ukraine. He is the co-author of a 2011 evaluation of PACT’s work with Ukraine’s civil society sector, as well as the co-author of a 2014 local governance and decentralization assessment and a 2015 assessment of everyday corruption, both commissioned by USAID. He has also been a member of the PONARS Eurasia network since 2010.

Peter Rollberg

Peter Rollberg is Professor of Slavic Languages, Film Studies, and International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Among his publications are the Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema (2008, second, expanded edition 2016) and the monograph The Cinema of Soviet Kazakhstan, 1925-1991: An Uneasy Legacy (2021; paperback 2022). Rollberg was Chair of the Department of Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literatures in 2006-2009; Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies in 2012-2019; and ESIA Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research Initiatives in 2019-2022.

Sharon Wolchik

Sharon Wolchik is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Professor Wolchik received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. At GW, she teaches courses on the comparative governments and politics of Central and Eastern Europe and the international relations of the region. She is currently researching the role of women in the transition to post-communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, ethnic issues in post-communist societies, and the development of party systems and other aspects of politics in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Oksana Yakushko

Dr. Oksana Yakushko is a professor of clinical psychology and the Director of the doctoral Professional Psychology program at George Washington University. She is a licensed and board-certified psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has received many awards for her global and local work on topics such as xenophobia, immigration, culture, the history of psychology, and trauma-focused psychotherapy. She is an author of over 60 scholarly publications. As a member of the Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S., she is actively involved in numerous projects, initiatives, grants, and publications related to the impact of Russian aggression on Ukraine and Ukrainians, as well as the decolonizing approaches to (western) understanding of Ukraine.

Paul Shaya

Paul Shaya, Professor of Practice, is a former senior intelligence officer with more than 28 years of experience in the US Government. Highlights of his career at the CIA include bringing AI and other technology into the analytic domain, working as a manager and analyst covering primarily the Middle East and Africa primarily, serving as an editor for the US President’s Daily Brief, leading an operational team of Arabic, Farsi, and Kurdish linguists, and serving as a terrorist finance analyst on 9/11. At the State Department, he worked at the US Embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv. He is currently working as a geopolitical risk adviser for a number of companies, Adjunct Lecturer at George Washington University (GWU), and a guest lecturer at the Kyiv School of Economics. He received an M.A at GWU’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a B.S. in Finance from the University of Illinois. Professionally, he is primarily focused on the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, and on the role of governance and civil society in these regions. He is an avid runner and is a fan of Arsenal (which has the only Lebanese footballer in the Premier League).

Matthew Salvetti

Matthew Salvetti is a former senior intelligence executive with more than 29 years of experience in the US government. Highlights of his government career include serving as a senior executive on the US National Intelligence Council, a senior intelligence advisor at NATO Headquarters, an editor and briefer of the US President’s Daily Brief, and a political officer in the State Department. He is currently Vice President and Head of Analytic Intelligence for Arcanum Global and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University and the Kyiv School of Economics. He received an M.A at GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a B.A. in International Relations at the College of William and Mary. His research interests include Europe’s changing security order following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the geopolitics of regional crises and conflicts, and the role of intelligence in national security decision-making. He is a soccer enthusiast, an avid follower of AS Roma, and the coach of his 12-year-old daughter’s team.

Andrew Hyde

Andrew Hyde is a professor of political science at CCAS, teaching U.S. foreign policy. He is also a Senior Fellow for Strategic Foresight at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, and a part-time training instructor for the U.S. Army Civil Affairs on governance. Andrew served as a career U.S. diplomat for thirty years, at the State Department and U.S. missions abroad. He has also worked in the U.S. Congress. He has a Master’s degree in National Resource Strategy from the Dwight Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy (National Defense University) with a specialty in Energy policy, and a BA in International Relations, Economics, and Political Science from Dickinson College. He has also done graduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the London School of Economics and interned at the British House of Commons and the European Commission in Brussels.

Bernhard Streitwieser

Bernhard Streitwieser is Associate Professor of International Education and International Affairs at George Washington University. His research examines the impact of globalization on higher education, with a focus on internationalization and student mobility, access to higher education for refugees and at-risk migrants, and international competition in higher education. Before joining GW, he was a visiting professor and Interim Chair of Comparative Education at Humboldt University in Berlin and previously held research and teaching positions at Northwestern University, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and the American Institutes for Research. He earned his PhD in International and Comparative Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College, an MS in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University, and a BA in International Relations from the University of Virginia. Dr. Streitwieser has published extensively on international higher education, migration, displacement, refugee education, and global mobility. He founded GW’s Refugee Educational Advancement Laboratory (REAL) and has received research support from organizations including the Fulbright Commission, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is also involved in research on education and national transition in Ukraine and is a producer at the Washington, DC-based film company Pennies Pictures.

Joseph Dunne

Joseph Dunne is a Research Professor at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy, where his current research focuses on AI governance in the public sector, including the implementation of AI regulations in Washington, DC, and Maryland, as well as AI governance in parliaments. He previously served as Director of the European Parliament Liaison Office in Washington, DC, from 2019 to 2023, leading relations with the U.S. Congress and legislative dialogue on digital policy, democracy promotion, the green transition, and other transatlantic priorities. During a long career with the European Parliament, he held senior roles focused on EU policymaking, regulatory impact assessment, parliamentary diplomacy, and preparations for the EU’s 2004 enlargement. Earlier in his career, he served in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, including as Secretary of Embassy in Madrid. His areas of expertise include EU institutions and politics, transatlantic relations, parliamentary diplomacy, comparative federalism, digital policy and AI governance, regulatory policy, and relations with Ukraine. He is the author of work on transatlantic parliamentary relations and on the European Parliament, and is currently co-editing a volume comparing the European Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also affiliated with institutes at SUNY and City University of London and is a faculty associate of the Petrach Program on Ukraine.

Dan Whitman

An Adjunct Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, Dan Whitman, also serves as Senior Fellow, Delphi Global Research Center. As a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, he was posted in Denmark, Spain, South Africa, Haiti, Cameroon, and briefly in a dozen other countries. As Assistant Professor at American University, 2009-2020, he taught Foreign Policy, research methods, cross-cultural communication, and oral history. Drawing on his course on International Crisis Management there, he shared the content via Zoom sessions with Ukrainians in 2022, the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The “ICM” certificate course, initially for 40 Ukrainians, has since expanded to include over 150 participants in Kazakhstan, other former Soviet satellite states, and Africa. Visiting speakers include journalists, diplomats, academics, NGO workers, and other high echelon professionals. He has lectured at Narxoz University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Traveling to Ukraine four times during the war period, he has conducted sessions with students and staff at Uzhhorod National University, Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Kyiv School of Economics, the American University of Kyiv, and Mariupol University in Kyiv. ICM regularly draws from a dozen universities in Ukraine and includes workshops on countering Russian FIMI and disinformation. Whitman’s published articles and eight books touch on subjects including the war in Ukraine, Public Diplomacy, Greenland, European stringed instruments, U.S. exchange programs with South Africa, and writers on three continents. He was a Fulbright scholar in 1980-81 in Brazzaville, Congo, after earning his PhD at Brown University in 1979. A Haiti Chronicle documents the three Haitian elections of 2000. His oral history of educational and cultural exchanges between apartheid South Africa and the United States, Outsmarting Apartheid, was published by SUNY Press in 2014.

External Faculty Associates

Keith Darden

Keith Darden is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics, Governance & Economics at American University. Darden’s research focuses on nationalism, state-building, and the politics of Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. His forthcoming book, Resisting Occupation in Eurasia (Cambridge University Press), examines the development of durable national loyalties through education and explains how they have shaped over a century of regional patterns in voting, secession, and armed resistance in Ukraine, Eurasia, and the world. His award-winning first book, Economic Liberalism and Its Rivals (Cambridge University Press, 2009), explored the formation of international economic institutions among the post-Soviet states, and explained why countries chose to join the Eurasian Customs Union, the WTO, or to eschew participation in any trade institutions. At SIS, Prof. Darden teaches courses in international relations, comparative politics, and the politics of Eurasia. Beyond SIS, Prof. Darden serves as co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Book Series, "Problems of International Politics," and is actively engaged with Russia and Eurasia through the Bilateral Working Group on US-Russia Relations, PONARS Eurasia, the Valdai Discussion Club, and other forums. His analyses and interviews concerning events in Ukraine have been published in Foreign Affairs, Survival, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Le Monde, National Geographic, The National Interest, Russia in Foreign Affairs, the AP, the New Yorker, and Reuters. He has been interviewed on CNN, Washington Public Radio’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, Sirius XM radio, CBS, Voice of America, Echo Moscow, Ukrainian television (Channel 5), and C-SPAN.

Gerard Toal

Gerard Toal is Professor of Government and International Affairs at Virginia Tech in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Toal holds a First Class Honors B.A. in History and Geography from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, an M.A. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984), and a Ph.D. in Political Geography from Syracuse University (1989). He served for ten years in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, before establishing the Government and International Affairs program in the School of Public and International Affairs in Northern Virginia. He has held fellowships at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Toal has authored, co-authored, and/or edited eight books. Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and Its Reversal, co-authored with Dr Carl Dahlman, won the Julian Minghi Book Prize from the Political Geography Specialty Group. Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus won the ENMISA Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association in 2019. He has served as an associate editor for the academic journals Geopolitics and Eurasian Geography and Economics. He currently serves on the editorial board of Political Geography, and Eurasian Geography and Economics, Nationalities Papers and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. He has published on various field research projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Together with Karina Korostelina of George Mason University, he is researching public opinion among residents and displaced persons in three fontline Ukrainian cities called 'The Costs of Peace.' His latest book, Ocean Rise Empires Fall: How Geopolitics Hastens Climate Catastrophe, which features a chapter on the ecological costs of the Russia-Ukraine war, will be published by Oxford University Press in February 2024.

Janine Wedel

Janine Wedel, a Distinguished University Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, is an award-winning author and public intellectual who writes about issues of power and elite influence, corruption, governance, and accountability through the lens of a social anthropologist. Her work spans Western democracies, the United States, and Central and Eastern Europe from the Cold War to the present. Her latest of seven books includes Elite Influence (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (Pegasus, 2014, 2016 paperback & Kindle editions). Prize-winning books include Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (Basic Books 2009) and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2001). Wedel has contributed analysis pieces to more than a dozen major outlets, including the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, USA Today, Salon, Boston Globe, Project Syndicate, and the Wall Street Journal Europe, and her work has been reviewed worldwide and translated into more than a dozen languages. She has been named a Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath in the U.K., a fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and the Kerstin Hesselgren Professor in Sweden. Wedel is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, an honor typically reserved for political scientists (previous recipients include Samuel Huntington and Mikhail Gorbachev).

Erik Herron

Erik Herron is the Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University. His research focuses on political institutions, especially electoral systems. He has traveled extensively in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, including a term as a Fulbright scholar in Ukraine and 17 election observation missions. He has published research in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, and other notable journals, as well as four books.

Judy Twigg

Judy Twigg is a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches courses on global health, international political economy, and diplomacy. For several years, she has also facilitated a VCU course on Ukrainian Politics and Society, taught by faculty from the Kyiv School of Economics. Twigg is a consultant for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank; adjunct professor at Georgetown University; Trustee of the Eurasia Foundation; and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her research focuses on issues of health, human capital, and health systems reform in Eurasia. Specifically, on Ukraine, she has published studies on infectious disease control and vaccine hesitancy, healthcare financing reform, health sector leadership, and the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently, she is chronicling Ukraine's wartime experience with HIV prevention and treatment. Twigg was a 2005 recipient of the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. She holds a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. in political science and Soviet studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in political science and security studies from MIT.

Polina Beliakova

Polina Beliakova is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Service, Foreign Policy & Global Security, at American University. She is a scholar of international security focusing on civil-military relations and the use of force, with regional expertise in Russia and Ukraine. As a native Ukrainian and Russian speaker, Dr. Beliakova collects data through elite interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and systematic reviews of local media sources, using quantitative and qualitative approaches to analysis. Her book project explains how governmental decisions about the use of force can weaken civilian control of the military even in states with historically coup-averse forces. The empirical chapters build on evidence from Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Beliakova’s work has been published by Comparative Political Studies, Texas National Security Review, Perspectives on Terrorism, Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, POLITICO, and The Washington Post. Her expertise on the Russian defense sector, Ukraine’s security sector governance, and Russia’s post-Cold War use of force informed projects by the U.K. Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Transparency International, and the World Peace Foundation, among others. Before joining American University, Dr. Beliakova held research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College.