Amanda Zadorian: thoughts on ASEEES convention

51st Annual Convention of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies was held in San Francisco (USA) at the end of November, 2019. Amanda Zadorian, ICSID research fellow, among other ICSID staff members gave a paper. We asked Amanda to give her opinion on the convention

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

• I am a postdoctoral Research Fellow at ICSID. My research focuses on the relationship between states and business under financial capitalism. My main project is a book manuscript about reforms to the national oil companies of Russia and Brazil during the commodity price boom of 2004-2014. I am originally from the U.S., and did my Ph.D. in New York.

In a few words, what is ASEEES conference? How did you get there?

• ASEEES is the biggest annual conference for interdisciplinary area studies about Russia and the surrounding regions. This was my second time giving a paper at ASEEES. I was invited by a colleague from the University of Colorado to join a panel about governance in Russia.

In your opinion, what does this particular conference mean for researchers?

• ASEEES is a great opportunity to meet with experts in different disciplines, from linguistics to literature to history to social sciences. I think it is the best place to learn about cutting-edge English-language research on Russia and its surrounding regions. And it is a wonderful reunion with colleagues from all over the world!

Did you give a paper? What was it about?

• I gave a presentation about social policy in Russia. The research comes from a chapter of my book, which puts forward the concept of “financial rentierism” to describe the Russian political economy of the last twenty years.

Please summarise your impression about the conference.

• The conference this year was in one of my favorite cities - San Francisco. Many Russian colleagues were there for the first time, and it was exciting to experience the city anew with them. While there are thousands of researchers at the conference, the political economy section is a smaller group, so it can feel like a select workshop within the big event. I received very helpful feedback on my paper from scholars in political science, economics and history.