Philip Lyon

Philip Lyon, Ph.D.

Philip Lyon is the Managing Director of the Center for European Studies, the Jean Monnet E.U. Center of Excellence, and the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He comes to the University of Washington from Al Jazeera, where he was a Project Management Coordinator in New York City and Washington, DC. In addition to his managerial duties, Philip teaches classes at the Jackson School of International Studies on professional development and thesis writing. Philip also serves as an application reviewer and interviewer every year for Fulbright fellowships and Boren fellowships at the University of Washington.

Philip earned his M.A. in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland. He also holds an M.A. in History from the University of Washington. Philip was a Fulbright Fellow and a Boren Fellow in Croatia, where he was a visiting scholar at the Croatian Institute for History. He holds a B.A. from Grinnell College, where he majored in history and focused on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Since graduating, he has biked across Iowa three times as part of the world famous RAGBRAI bike ride for a total exceeding 1500 miles. Iowa, as his fellow cyclists can attest, is not flat.

Philip served as Co-Chair of the Fulbright Association’s National Chapter Advisory Board, having previously served as the President of the Fulbright Association’s Washington, DC Board of Directors and having also been a Fulbright Association Board Member in New York City. Previously, he also served as Board President of the Boren Forum, the alumni association for the National Security Education Program’s Boren Fellowships and Scholarships. Philip has a strong commitment to alumni relations.

In addition to his work in international education and media, Philip has worked on elections and civil society promotion with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Philip has lived a life devoted to European studies since adolescence. While at university, he studied in Vienna, Austria for a semester and also worked in Ireland for a summer with the Irish American Cultural Institute’s Irish Way program. Subsequently, he worked as an English language teacher in Prague, Czechia and in Barcelona, Spain. As noted above, Philip worked with the OSCE and conducted doctoral research in Croatia over almost two years with the Fulbright and Boren programs. Later, Philip spent summers studying German in Berlin and conducted much of his doctoral research in  Berlin, Stuttgart, and Tuebingen, Germany. In short, Philip has committed himself to Europe in order to personally understand the continent not only from the perspective of its individual countries but also from a European perspective.

In addition to English, Philip actively speaks Spanish, German and Croatian/Serbian. He also has receptive Catalan from having lived in Barcelona.

Philip is an avid cyclist and served on the Board of Directors of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) from 2010 to early 2015. Sometimes known as Dr. Phil, he is a native of Washington, DC and a proud Seattleite.