Washington, DC

Transatlantic Academy Announces New Fellows Working On “Russia and the West”

June 23, 2015
3 min read
WASHINGTON – The Transatlantic Academy is pleased to announce its eighth fellowship year of rigorous and collaborative academic research. The 2015-16 fellows will focus on the topic of “Russia and the West.”

WASHINGTON – The Transatlantic Academy is pleased to announce its eighth fellowship year of rigorous and collaborative academic research. The 2015-16 fellows will focus on the topic of “Russia and the West.”

“Western unity in the face of Russian aggression has been impressive thus far, but will it continue to hold? Can the West develop a long term strategy for dealing with the challenges Russia poses to the Euroatlantic order?” asked Stephen Szabo, the Academy’s executive director. “Our upcoming year on ‘Russia and the West’ will bring together an exceptional group of analysts to address these questions and propose a strategic response.”

The new Academy fellows will examine challenges and Western policy options regarding Russia in areas from hard security to energy to economics. The group of six fellows from Europe and North America will work in collaboration for nine months to produce policy recommendations for how transatlantic partners should move forward regarding Russia following its actions in Ukraine and beyond since the February 2014 fall of the Yanukovych regime.

The topic for the year was chosen by the Academy and its partners following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. “How the transatlantic community deals with Russia is clearly one of the keys to the future of Europe and the broader U.S.-European relationship,” said Szabo.

With an initial meeting in Washington this week, the fellows will convene in September for the academic year at the Washington, DC, headquarters of The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), one of the Academy’s founding partners. They will also have shorter residency at the Berlin office of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, another Academy partner, in the fall.

Throughout the year, the fellows will organize workshops and contribute policy-relevant articles and papers to inform the policy debate on both sides of the Atlantic. The year will conclude in spring 2016 with a collaborative strategy paper for European and North American governments to move forward regarding Russia.

The 2015-16 full-year fellows are:

                           Nelli Babayan – Armenia, Freie Universität Berlin

                           Marie Mendras – France, Sciences Po

                           Christopher Miller – United States, Yale University

                           Andrew Moravcsik – United States, Princeton University

                           Ulrich Speck – Germany, Carnegie Europe

                           Angela Stent – United States, Georgetown University

Full biographies are available here. The full-year fellows will be joined by a series of shorter-term fellows including current and former policymakers, journalists, and other thinkers. 


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