Dean LaRue – How Does the EU Actually Work and How Is It Changing in the Face of Russian Aggression in Ukraine?

Dean LaRue is a Senior Lecturer for the Center for European Studies and European Union Center in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Mr. LaRue holds a Master of Arts in Policy Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Global Trade, Transportation and Logistics from the University of Washington. He is a member of the founding team for the West Coast Model European Union, the primary instructor for the UW’s European Union Policy and Simulation course since 2005, and a former Outreach Coordinator for CES/EUC. Mr. LaRue is a former US Foreign Service Officer for the United States Information Agency and International Product Manager for Amazon.com.

Christopher Jones – What to Do About Russia? Russia, the EU, and the International System

Chris Jones is Associate Professor of International Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. His teaching focuses on NATO/Warsaw pact relations, post-Cold War security issues, and political economy of the post-Cold War era.

Glennys Young – Is Russia European? How Russians See Europe and Themselves in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

I am a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. Over the course of my career, I have become increasingly interested in the USSR’s involvement in transnational movements and processes, whether political, social, cultural, or economic. I have also pursued research interests in the history of Communism and world history. In addition to the books mentioned below, I’ve published articles on a number of topics in Soviet social and political history.

My first book, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), examined the Bolshevik project of cultural transformation through a case study of peasants’ responses to the Soviet anti-religious campaign. In 1999, the book was awarded Honorable Mention for the Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Prize from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

In 2011, I published The Communist Experience in the Twentieth Century: A Global History through Sources (Oxford University Press. Through a collection of carefully selected documents, some presented for the first time in English translation, the book seeks to provide an inside look at how people around the world subjectively experienced, and contributed to, global communism.

My current book project is entitled The Return: From the Soviet Union to Franco’s Spain in the Cold War, under contract with Oxford University Press, England.

The Return reveals the unrecognized political, social, and cultural shockwaves of the Cold War repatriation of Spanish nationals who had been catapulted to the USSR as refugees and exiles in the Spanish Civil War, or as soldiers who fought for the Nazi Wehrmacht in World War II.   What makes the Spanish case distinct with respect to numerous others involving post-World War II repatriations from the USSR is that it involved civilians and military personnel, including prisoners of war.  As well, the repatriation of Spanish nationals constituted the largest repatriation of civilians from the USSR to a country in Western Europe during the Cold War.    Although the repatriation of Spaniards—both Red Army POWs and civilians—began during World War II, albeit in small numbers, the return of the Spaniards became an international issue beginning in the late 1940s, just as the Cold War was heating up.    The book focuses on the seven expeditions of repatriates from the USSR to Franco’s Spain in the second half of the 1950s.

Scott Montgomery – EU Economic and Energy Responses to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Scott L. Montgomery is an author, geoscientist, and affiliate faculty member in the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. He writes and lectures on a wide variety of topics related to energy (geopolitics, technology, resources, climate change), American politics, intellectual history, language and communication, and the history of science. He is a frequent contributor to online journals such as The Conversation, Forbes, and Fortune, and his articles and op-eds are regularly featured in many outlets, including Newsweek, Marketwatch, The Huffington Post, and UPI. He also gives public talks and serves on panels related to issues in global energy and their relation to political and economic trends and ideas of sustainability. For more than two decades, Montgomery worked as a geoscientist in the energy industry, writing over 100 scientific papers and 70 monographs on topics related to oil and gas, energy technology, and industry trends. Montgomery is the author of 12 books and is currently pursuing several areas of research, including the role of Enlightenment ideas in present-day American politics, as well as the future of petroleum and its role in geopolitics and climate change.

Brenden McElmeel – Russia vs. ‘Gayropa?’ Russian Cultural Politics since the Conservative Turn

Bio coming soon!