• Board of Directors
• US Staff
• Eurasia Staff
• Other Staff

Maria Carlson
Chair
University of Kansas

Maria Carlson is professor of Slavic languages and literatures and courtesy professor of history at the University of Kansas. Her research and teaching interests are broadly interdisciplinary and include Russian intellectual history, literature, culture, and Slavic folklore. She specializes in counter-mainstream philosophical, religious, and occult movements in Russia; her publications engage the fields of Russian symbolism as a philosophical and religious world view, occultism, Slavic folklore, and the arts in Russia.

From 1992 to 2003 Carlson served as director of the US/ED Title VI National Resource Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Kansas. During this time she worked extensively on grant projects that support educational development, language proficiency testing, public administration training, student exchanges, small business development, resource center support, archival access, and educational outreach. She developed new programs and brought in more than $6 million in research and project funding. In 2000 Carlson received the Distinguished Service Award for Academic Leadership from the International Relations Council for her many initiatives on behalf of international education. She has served or currently serves as board member for a number of national agencies in the field, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dante Fascell Board at the U.S. Department of State, the Council of National Resource Center Directors, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, among others.

Professor Carlson has received individual research awards from IREX, Fulbright-Hays, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Hall Center for the Humanities. In 2005 she received the National Award for Excellence in Post-Secondary Teaching from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. In recognition of her significant service to the University of Kansas, she was inducted into the KU Women’s Hall of Fame in 2009.

Her current projects include a series of articles on the new Russian paganism and the Book of Veles and a monograph on corporeal revenants in Slavic folk belief.

Ted Hopf
Vice-Chair
Ohio State University

Professor Hopf is interested in international relations theory, identity, methodology, and the former Soviet space. He has written a book on deterrence theory and Soviet foreign policy in the Third World (Peripheral Visions (University of Michigan Press, 1994) and edited a volume on contemporary Russian foreign policy, Understandings of Russian Foreign Policy (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). His new book, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Cornell, 2002), applies a social cognitive account of identity to Soviet and Russian foreign policy. Other publications have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Security, European Journal of International Relations, and Security Studies.

Robert Huber
NCEEER President
Editor, Problems of Post-Communism
bth@nceeer.org

Robert T. Huber is currently serving as NCEEER's President. He also serves as a Senior Consultant for Social Science Programs to the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, an Affiliated Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, and Editor of the policy research journal, Problems of Post-Communism.

Dr. Huber has been responsible for the design, implementation, and funding of numerous research, training, teaching and technical assistance programs dealing with the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. He has raised over $100 million for the field of Eurasian and East European studies and for associated research and training programs for scholars and other professionals from the United States and from Eurasia and Eastern Europe. His publications include Soviet Perceptions of the U.S. Congress: Impact on Superpower Relations, and (co-edited with Donald R. Kelley) Perestroika-Era Politics: The New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms, as well as several articles and special studies on the Soviet foreign policy and national security establishment and on the post-Soviet Russian parliament. He is currently involved in a multi-year research effort to write the institutional histories of the major national research organizations in the field of Eurasian and East European studies.

Dr. Huber has led major and successful efforts to increase funding for the Title VIII program, which supports a variety of programs which promote advanced research on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Dr. Huber has also able to initiate, through grants of several million dollars, a wide array of new research and training programs for American scholars, graduate students and other professionals as well as their counterparts from the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

In addition to his professional duties, Dr. Huber is a Catholic Deacon in the Archdiocese of Seattle, St. Hubert's Catholic Church in Langley, Washington. He has many spiritual and charitable responsibilities including ministerial work with the Mary Mother of God Catholic Mission in Vladivostok, Russia.

Dana Ponte
Senior Program Officer
dana@nceeer.org

NCEEER Senior Program Officer Dana Ponte grew up on her family's ranch in Southern Oregon, and graduated summa cum laude from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon with a degree in Russian studies. After a year as an Americorps volunteer, Dana moved to Boston to continue her education. She is a 2005 graduate of the master's program in Russian and Central Asian Studies at Harvard and is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education Leadership and Policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dana worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies before taking her current position with the National Council in 2006. Her personal research concerns Volga Tatar intellectual and political movements in the early Soviet period--in particular, efforts to reconcile Bolshevism with Islam.

Shoshana Billik
Program/IT Officer
shoshana@nceeer.org

Shoshana Billik joined the NCEEER staff in December 2007 after receiving her MA degree in Russian and Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle. She previously worked in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry for seven years and brings her extensive IT background to her position with NCEEER. She also participated in an ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) internship program in Russia called the US-Russia Volunteer Initiative, where she taught computer classes for disabled Russian children. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, dancing, and watching movies.

Stuart Goldman
Scholar-in-Residence, Washington, DC
goldman@nceeer.org

Stuart D. Goldman was a specialist in Russian and Eurasian affairs at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress from 1979 until his retirement in 2009. CRS performs research and policy analysis for the United States Congress. Dr. Goldman was the senior CRS specialist in Russian political and military affairs. His areas of expertise include Russian domestic politics, foreign and defense policy, and U.S.-Russian relations. He has written scores of published CRS reports and hundreds of analytical memoranda on these and related subjects for Congress. His writings have appeared in Congressional Committee Prints and in scholarly and general interest publications. He lectures in the United States, Europe, and Asia and is regularly interviewed and quoted by journalists covering Russian and Eurasian affairs.

Before joining the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of CRS, Dr. Goldman was a member of the International Studies Faculty of the Pennsylvania State University (1971-1978), and an Assistant Professor of History at Wilson College (1969-1971). His academic research focused on modern diplomatic and military history and Soviet-Japanese relations.

A native of New York City, Goldman received his B.A. from Brooklyn College (1964), M.A. from Colgate University (1965), and Ph.D. from Georgetown University (1970), majoring in history at all three institutions. In 1972 he was selected as one of the first Japan Foundation Fellows and spent one year in Tokyo as an exchange scholar focusing on Soviet-Japanese conflict in the late 1930s and its connection to the outbreak of World War II. Dr. Goldman attended the National War College, 1995-1996, earning an M.S. in National Security Strategy.

Alexei Kharlamov
Senior Program Officer/Eurasia
alexei@nceeer.org

Alexei Kharlamov has been with NCEEER since January 2001 working as a Program Officer. His main responsibilities center around the Carnegie Research Fellowship Program which allows eligible Russian and Eurasian scholars to conduct research in the United States. He received his Masters Degree (MS in Education Leadership) from Drake University, Des Moines, IA in 2000. He also holds a degree in linguistics and English philology from Saratov State University, Russia (awarded in 1995). His previous job assignments include teaching in a high school in Saratov, Russia and working for Youth for Understanding International Exchange in Des Moines, IA and for Freedom House in Washington, DC. His interests span from languages and literature to travel and creative writing.

Ann E. Robertson
Managing Editor
Problems of Post-Communism
popc@nceeer.org

John Hardt
Senior Advisor
jadmr@nceeer.org

Erin Craver
Bookkeeper
erinc@nceeer.org