Dinissa Duvanova tackles social media and political behavior in Ukraine


Dinissa Duvanova. Image by Ilaria Parogni

On February 13, 2015, the Jordan Center’s Colloquium Series welcomed Dinissa Duvanova, an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University, to speak about her recent research on online social activism in Ukraine. The colloquium, titled Social Networks as a Barometer of Political Polarization, took on a collegial tone, often turning into a conversation between the presenter and the audience about the project itself as well as general problems concerning online data collection and analysis.

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Experts discuss Russian law and its trajectories



On October 16, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed several scholars to participate in a panel, entitled Russia’s Legal Trajectories: Law in Action and Question, 1830 to 2014. In her introductory remarks, Professor of History at NYU Jane Burbank stated that there are many perplexing ideas about law and Russia. Some commentators think that the rule of law is incompatible with autocratic or Communist governments; for them Russian law is an oxymoron. Yet, Burbank remarked, law has been important to government in Russia for many centuries. In addition, for the last 10 year or so many scholars have been rigorously scrutinizing the subject. This panel was meant to give its audience “a taste of new legal history” in four different presentations about law from the early 19th century, through the legal reforms of 1864, to the current day.

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Oleg Kharkhordin speaks on rules of order in Russian society



On October 15, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed Oleg Kharkhordin with a lecture entitled “A Point of Order! The Troubled Travels of Robert’s Rules of Order from America to Russia, or How Russians Tried to Invent Order Themselves.” Oleg Kharkhordin is a political sociologist and the the Rector of the European University of St. Petersburg, which, as Director Yanni Kotsonis stressed in his introduction, is an institution with a remarkably high concentration of brain power and quality.

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