Baltics Past and Present

Benjamin Sutherland writes for The Economist, reporting on military and defense issues as well as energy, business, science, and political culture. He edited Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence, an Economist book on how advances in weaponry and spycraft are reshaping global security, and wrote a chapter on the future of warfare for the book Megatech: Technology in 2050. He also contributes to Economist podcasts.

Benjamin periodically teaches undergraduate, graduate and MBA courses in geopolitics and international business as an adjunct. In recent years, he has taught at HEC-Paris; the Paris School of Business; the Zagreb School of Economics and Management; and, in Italy, H-Farm College and Scuola Holden. Earlier in his career, he wrote for Newsweek and was a senior editor at COLORS magazine. He also served as a staff screenwriter with Cinemarket Productions in Paris, and co-directed the Sundance Channel documentary Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man.

As an expert for Smithsonian Journeys, Benjamin has focused on Europe, the Persian Gulf, and the broader Middle East. His lectures cast light on a broad range of geopolitical topics, from Central Europe’s reemergence as a geopolitical pivot in the struggle between authoritarian states and free societies to Russia’s grand strategy and its geographic roots, to clashes in civilizational visions for world order. His lectures are richly illustrated with insights from his reporting for The Economist in more than a dozen countries. An avid traveler, Sutherland speaks French and Italian fluently and is proficient in Spanish.

Nadieszda Kizenko is a professor of history at the State University of New York at Albany. She received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD from Columbia University and has held fellowships in Budapest, London, and Munich. Her research, lecturing, and writing interests include the Russian empire; Eastern Europe; and religious culture, including ritual, architecture, hagiography, and iconography. 

Nadieszda’s first book, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, won the Heldt Prize for Best First Book in Slavic Studies and was translated into Russian. Other books include Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy and Good for the Souls and A History of Confession in the Russian Empire. She has published extensively and has lectured at venues including the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the New York Public Library; the Museum of Russian Icons; the Center for Historical Truth and Reconciliation; and a variety of educational institutions.  

Her research has been supported by grants including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the American Councils Research Scholar Program.

Dr. Alexander Diener is a Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. He holds a BA from Pepperdine University, an MA in international relations from the University Chicago, an MA in political geography from the University of South Carolina, and a PhD in geography from the University of Wisconsin.  Alex is currently the Managing Co-Editor of the academic journal Oxford Intersections Borders and has written extensively on topics ranging from diasporas to urban landscape change to borders and place attachment. He has over 20 years’ experience in Central Asia and Mongolia and spent many a night on the steppe, in the deserts, and on the mountains. Alex is also a professional musician and writes novels, commonly set in the former Soviet Union.

Laurie Koloski traveled to Poland for the first time in 1981, knowing little about the country and maybe a dozen words of the language. It didn’t take long to realize what a special place it was, and she lived there for four years before returning to the U.S. to complete her undergraduate studies. She has been traveling to and studying Central and Eastern Europe ever since.

Recently retired from William & Mary’s Department of History, Laurie received degrees from the University of Michigan, Yale University, and Stanford University, as well as certificates from the Center for Polish Language and Culture in the World at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. While her training and research focused on social and cultural history in communist-era Poland, her teaching interests have encompassed modern European and global history, communism and socialism, historical interpretation, and material culture. Her favorite course at W&M was Stuff: Objects and Their (Hi)Stories, in which she worked with first-year students to read material objects and critically evaluate the past and present-day stories of their favorite (and sometimes least favorite) things.

Laurie uses case studies to highlight key historical themes and lessons, often by focusing on the ways that things such as monuments, maps, food, buildings, and even mustaches can help us understand broad developments such as identity, imperial power, and ideology. She has enjoyed traveling with Smithsonian Journeys tours since 2016 and is always eager to meander back streets with her fellow travelers, looking for that little café, shop, or street sign that has a larger story to tell.

Writer and lecturer Adam Tanner spent many years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, including as Balkans bureau chief; San Francisco bureau chief; and correspondent in Germany, Moscow, and Washington D.C. He has long studied colonialism, economic engagement, and globalization, with a particular interest in the enduring impact of Europe on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the BBC, and written for publications such as Scientific America, Forbes, Fortune, Time, and Frommer’s guidebooks.  

Adam was a fellow and associate at Harvard University from 2011-26, initially at the Nieman Foundation, then the Institution of Quantitative Social Science, and most recently, the Shorenstein Center Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.  He has written two books on privacy and commerce: Our Bodies, Our Data and What Stays in Vegas.