Welcome to my personal website
At this website you can find my CV and some of my works.
My academic focus is in the area of Russian and East European Studies and I have multiple interests in this field.
The interest in cultural and linguistic studies about Russia draws upon my undergraduate education where I focused on Russian Philology with extensive courses in Russian Language, Literature and Arts. My thesis was based on the linguistic analysis of the text and elicited the verbal means that described the concepts of time and space in the fiction text. These text analysis skills help me now in analysing interview scripts, newspapers and documents, which is quite essential for a social science research.
My interest in sociological research about Russia started at the Master Program “Studies in European Societies” (Saint Petersburg State University, Russia; 2005-2007). This study program was very enlightening for me as it was based on the classical sociological theories, drew upon European examples and compared them to Russian realities. In my master dissertation I examined how people understand such political concepts as human rights, and namely the right to education, and to what extent people were able to absorb these European and largely the Western world values.
After that, since 2007 I participated as a volunteer at the international research project “State Violence and the Right to Peace” (GIPGAP project at Boston University), which studied Russian people’s perceptions of the governmental violence and the concepts of peace, war and aggression. I helped in gathering the data, translation and further analysis. The courses in quantitative research skills at the Summer Institute of Survey Research Techniques (University of Michigan) gave me new skills in the data analysis and I am applying them now conducting further analysis on the data gathered in this project.
I am interested in studies about civil education and the power of non-governmental organizations in this field. This kind of studies might inform us about citizen’s knowledge of political concepts, their attitudes and support for the government programs. In order to strengthen my expertise in this field I study (academic year 2009) non-profit management and international nongovernmental organizations at Grand Valley State University (Michigan, USA). Currently I am doing a research project about civil education and non governmental organizations and compare the situation in Russia with US experience in this field.
I plan to do a dissertation project about multicultural policies and practices in higher education, student’s awareness about these issues. I would be interested to participate in research projects about civil society, perception of political concepts and various cultural as well as educational policies.
As a result of my academic experience, I came to the following area of research interests: the investigation of how people perceive political ideas and reforms might inform us about the democratic developments in the country, because this affects to a large extent the implementation of reforms, and the changes, that occur in public life.
After my education I would like to become a scholar and join the research institution studying the implementation of the educational and cultural policies. I also believe in the capacities of the international non-governmental organizations and wish to work with those specializing in the field of education and cultural politics.
Sincerely,
Anna Medvedeva.
