Professional Affiliation

Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; Senior Adviser, Eurasia Program, Social Science Research Council; and former Kennan Institute Title VIII-Supported Short-Term Research Scholar

Expert Bio

As a social demographer, my research focuses on the main drivers and implications of demographic change and population displacement across Eurasia. My publications appear in academic journals, policy briefs, assessment reports, and edited volumes. My current research includes a MINERVA-funded investigation of state capacity challenges in healthcare (including COVID-19) and education in the multicultural countries of Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine (Co-PI, with Erik Herron (PI) and Ralph Clem), a Norwegian Research Council grant on shifting sociopolitical identities in Ukraine (VALREF, PI Geir Flikke), and a solo book project on population change and social stability in Central Asia.

A former Title VIII scholar at Kennan, I led an earlier working group at the Center on migration, generating the volume "Migration, Homeland, and Belonging in Eurasia (Blair Ruble and Erin Hofman co-editors).

Wilson Center Project

From Red to Gray: The Elderly of Rural Russia

Project Summary

What will happen to the growing numbers of elderly in rural Russia? What will replace the collapsing structural support systems of the former Soviet state? Traditional support systems, based on family or community ties, have experienced long term decline during the Soviet period due to migration and changing social attitudes. elderly; rural; aging; health; Novosibirsk; Kemerov

Previous Terms

Kennan Institute Title VIII-Supported Short-Term Research Scholar. Associate Professor, University of Texas. "From Red to Gray: The Elderly of Rural Russia" December 8, 1993 - January 20, 1994.