Alexander J. Motyl

Alexander J. Motyl (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1984) is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, he is the author of Pidsumky imperii, 2009; Puti imperii, 2004; Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires, 2001; Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, 1999; Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism, 1993; Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR, 1990; Will the Non Russians Rebel?; State, Ethnicity, and Stability in the USSR, 1987; The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919 1929, 1980, and the editor of over ten volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, 2000. He is currently compiling The Holodomor Reader: An Anthology of Documents on the Ukrainian Genocide, 1932-1933. His novels include Whiskey Priest, 2005; Who Killed Andrei Warhol, 2007; Flippancy, 2009; and The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, 2011.

John Micgiel

John S. Micgiel is a historian specializing in the modern history of East Central Europe. Having received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, he spent nearly three decades teaching in the University’s School of International and Public Affairs where he was, among other administrative assignments, long-time Director of the Institute on East Central Europe. Professor Micgiel has authored or edited ten books on the region and is a frequent visitor to its academic institutions.  For many years he has been recurring Visiting Professor at Warsaw University’s East European Centre.

Christopher Brennan

Christopher Brennan, lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is a historian of Central and Eastern Europe with a special interest in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Germany and the history of the Czechs. Though British, he grew up in south-western France. He obtained a BA in Modern Languages (German and Russian, plus Czech) at the University of Bristol and a Master’s in Slavonic Studies from Oriel College at the University of Oxford.

Dr. Brennan studied for a PhD at the London School of Economics on the subject of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the responsibility therefore of its last monarch, Emperor Karl I. He taught undergraduates for four years, with a one year hiatus in Paris lecturing American undergraduates on French history and on the history of Eastern European Communism. He has  written on the memory of World War I in the former Habsburg Empire and on the Balkan Wars. He authored chapters to two volumes on the collapse of Austria-Hungary and its aftermath and is now working on a biography of Karl I.

Laurie Koloski

Dr. 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, though, and she lived there for four years before returning to the US. She has been traveling to and studying east central Europe ever since.

Currently an Associate Professor of History at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, she received her BA in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Michigan, an MA from Yale University, and a PhD in History from Stanford University. She also holds certificates from the Center for Polish Language and Culture in the World at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where she studied between 1982 and 1985.

Her teaching interests include modern Europe, communism and socialism, historical interpretation, world history since 1000, and material culture. Her research centers on post-1945 Poland, and she is completing a monograph titled Seeing Beyond the State: Kraków, Culture, and the Remaking of Poland, 1945-1955, to be published by University of North Carolina Press. She has led large and small groups of students on study abroad programs in the Czech Republic and Poland, and between 2006 and 2010 she served as director of William & Mary’s Reves Center for International Studies, which oversees study abroad and international student/scholar programs and supports a range of on-campus international activities and overseas partnerships. As director, she helped launch new cross-disciplinary faculty-led research projects, a global film festival, and the College’s joint undergraduate degree programs with St Andrews University in Scotland.

Carol Reynolds

Carol Reynolds weaves history, humor, and high energy into everything she does.  She has lived and taught in Germany at various times, starting in 1981.  Her research interests include German Romanticism and the musical court of Frederick the Great.  She founded and directed Southern Methodist University’s Study-in-Germany Program and enjoys leading tours, including a Rhine-Main-Danube Donors’ Tour for the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina as well as Russian tours for The Dallas Symphony and The Dallas Opera.  She is fluent in German and Russian and maintains a home in Weimar.

After her career as professor of Music History at SMU, Carol and her husband Hank moved to Texas, where she began designing multi-media Fine Arts curricula.  Her popular Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture (2009) has reached students across the world.  In 2011 she released a cross-discipline course called Exploring America’s Musical Heritage.  She is now creating a curriculum on the history of sacred music from Jewish Liturgy to 1600.  

Carol is a staunch advocate of Arts Education at every stage of life and speaks regularly at educational conferences across the U.S. She is popular speaker for organizations like The Dallas Symphony, Van Cliburn Concerts, The Dallas Opera, Tulsa Symphony, Kimball Museum, Fort Worth Opera, San Francisco Wagner Society, The Davidson Institute, and The Smithsonian Associates in Washington, D.C. Carol is a frequent Smithsonian Journeys Expert and has led unforgettable journeys to Russia, the Baltics, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany.

Tim Blanning

_{Tim Blanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and is also a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1990, Tim has also published extensively on the political and cultural history of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among his publications are The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (2002), The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (2007), The Triumph of Music (2008) and The Romantic Revolution (2010).  Tim's books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, German, Polish, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, Croatian and Arabic. His most recent book is a biography of Frederick the Great of Prussia and was published by Penguin/Random House.}