Participation in Japanese workshops

IIMS research fellow Fabian Burkhardt participated in two workshops, which were held in Japan and were thematically dedicated to the political and economic issues in Russia and Ukraine.

The first workshop «Political and Economic Elites in Russia and Ukraine» was organized at the Keio University (Tokyo, Japan) and took place on March 7, 2019. In the framework of the workshop, Fabian presented his paper «Kinship networks and Russia's bureaucratic elite: Dynasties in non-hereditary authoritarian regimes». A few days later, on March 11, 2019, he presented another paper named «Performance management and the implementation of landmark executive orders: Evidence from Russia's 2012 May decrees» at the University of Hokkaido (Sapporo, Japan), where the workshop «Policy Process and Social-Economic Structure in Russia and Ukraine» was held.

“Despite territorial proximity, extensive economic trade and, at times, sensitive political relations, the academic community in Japan studying Russian politics appears to be rather small, - Fabian said. - Nonetheless, assistant professor Atsushi Ogushi of Keio University brought together a carefully selected group of scholars ranging from PhD students, postdoctoral fellows to professors working on political and economic issues of the post-Soviet region. While at Keio, the workshop spoke to a more general social science audience coming from various academic and policy-oriented institutions in Tokyo, the discussion at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University in Sapporo was shaped by the interdisciplinary character of the area studies conducted at the Center. Overall, while due to its historical, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness from more common conference venues Japan made a rather exotic impression on those scholars visiting the country for the first time, the workshops demonstrated that a common disciplinary and academic language could still be found among scholars working on similar research projects”.