Philip Lyon

Philip Lyon, Ph.D.

Philip Lyon is the Managing Director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, the Center for West European Studies, and the Jean Monnet E.U. Center of Excellence 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 holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland and earned his M.A. in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as well as an M.A. in History from the University of Washington. He was a Fulbright Fellow and a Boren Fellow in Croatia, where he was a visiting scholar at the Croatian Institute for History. Subsequently, he was a Visiting Researcher at SAIS.  He holds a B.A. from Grinnell College, where he majored in history and focused on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Philip enjoys languages and speaks German, Spanish and Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian. Additionally, he also reads and understands Catalan after his substantial time living and working in Barcelona. Philip also has a reading knowledge of Russian.

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.

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 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.