OUR TEAM

BOARD MEMBER

Michael Bernhard holds the Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida. His work centers on questions of democratization and development, both globally and in the context of Europe.  Among the issues that have figured prominently in his research agenda are the role of civil society in democratization, institutional choice in new democracies, the political economy of democratic survival, the legacy of extreme forms of dictatorship, and the politics of memory. He has long been associated with the Varieties of Democracy project in a number of different capacities. He recently completed two terms as the editor of Perspectives on Politics (2017- 23), a flagship journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA).  In the past he has served as the chair of the European Politics Section of APSA, the chair of the Research Network on the Historical Development of States and Regimes for Europe of the Council for European Studies, and the editor of the newsletter of the Democracy and Autocracy Section of APSA.

SECRETARY

Wendy Bracewell (BA, MA, PhD, Stanford University; FRHistS) is currently Emeritus Professor of Southeast European History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. She has published on early modern South Slav history and literature, on gender issues, and on travel writing. She served as Editor of EEPS, together with Krzysztof Jasiewicz, from 2013-2023.

TREASURER

Krzysztof Jasiewicz, the Ames Professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at Washington and Lee University, should not be confused with the Warsaw-based historian of the same first and last name (no relation).  

Jasiewicz, a native of Poland, received his MA in Sociology at Warsaw University (1972) and his Ph.D. at the Polish Academy of Sciences (1976, also in Sociology). He has taught and/or held fellowships at Warsaw U., Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, and the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, among others. From 2013 to 2023, together with Wendy Bracewell, the Editor of the journal East European Politics and Societies and Cultures (EEPS). He has published extensively on elections, voting behaviour, party systems, and political attitudes in Poland and other Central European states. His recent publications include Roads to and from Democracy: Studies in Polish Politics, 1980-2020 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023), another book (in Polish) on political behavior in Poland, and articles in the Journal of Democracy, East European Politics and Societies, Concilium Civitas Almanach, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and European Journal of Political Research, as well as chapters in edited volumes, in English, Polish, and French.

BOARD MEMBER

Helena Kolenda - Prior to her retirement in January 2024, Ms. Kolenda worked at the Henry Luce Foundation for 25 years, as program officer (1998-2008) and program director (2008-2023) of its Asia Program.  She holds a BA in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of California, Berkeley (1980) and a JD from the University of Texas School of Law (1989).  Between 1981 and 1996, she spent a decade in China, working first as an English teacher with Volunteers in Asia and later as an attorney with the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.  Ms. Kolenda serves as chair of the Harvard-Yenching Institute Board of Trustees and on the boards of the EEPS Foundation and the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.  She is a Senior Advisor to the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations and a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. 

VICE PRESIDENT & JOURNAL EDITOR

Lavinia Stan is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada and European Research Area (ERA) Chair at University Lucian Blaga in Sibiu, Romania. A graduate of the University of Toronto, she has published extensively on post-communist democratization, transitional justice, as well as religion and politics. She is the author or editor of fifteen books, including the three-volume Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2013 and 2023). Her forthcoming title is East Central Europe since 1989: Politics, Culture, and Society (London: Routledge), co-written with Dr. Sabrina P. Ramet.

PRESIDENT & HEAD OF ADMINISTRATION

Andrzej W. Tymowski is founding president of the New York-based EEPS Foundation, which sponsors the quarterly journal East European Politics and Societies and the Flying University for Ukrainian Students.

Tymowski recently retired from being Director of International Programs at the American Council of Learned Societies, where for over twenty-five years he administered support for humanities scholars in eastern Europe and in Africa, as well as in China studies and in Buddhist studies.

Immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Tymowski co-founded the Flying University for Ukrainian Students. In February 2023, he taught a two-week writing course in Lviv, Ukraine at Ukrainian Catholic University. In academic year 2023-24, he moderated the weekly forum of the New-University-in-Exile Consortium for scholars fleeing authoritarian regimes. Currently, at the University of Warsaw, he teaches “Academic Writing in English: Ethics, Structure, and Style.”