About the Center

The Havighurst Center for East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies was established as the result of an endowment from the late Walter Havighurst, author and longtime Miami University English professor who taught at Miami from 1928-1969.

The Center is interdisciplinary, with faculty associates housed in departments throughout the University. In addition to the Center's Director and Staff, the Center relies on Faculty who are drawn together by their mutually held interests in exploring issues related to Eastern Europe, Russia and the Eurasian region.

Since its inaugural year, the Havighurst Center has supported intellectual and cultural activities at Miami University. Our signature event, the annual Havighurst Lecture, has brought former Presidents, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and major cultural figures to Miami’s campus. The Center hosts an annual International Young Researchers’ conference, with papers from advanced graduate students and recent doctorate recipients from the U.S. and abroad. It also sponsors the Havighurst Colloquia Series, a course-related lecture series in which invited speakers present their current research to students.

In addition to organizing its own lectures and conferences, the Havighurst Center sponsors Teaching Fellows and Undergraduate Research Fellows. Our student fellows have received prestigious grants, including Fulbright, Carnegie, and Critical Language awards. We also offer scholarships for students wishing to pursue language study and research related to Eastern Europe, Russian, and Eurasian studies, including the Dawisha Scholarship named after the Center’s founding director.

The Havighurst Center’s initial title (the Havighurst Center for Russian & Post-Soviet Studies) reflected the thinking at the time of its founding that “Russia” was the major successor state to the USSR and that “post-Soviet” allowed the Center to offer courses and events that focused on the newly independent Soviet republics. Nearly a quarter century after its founding and more than three decades after the Soviet collapse, the name showed its age.

 In 2024, timed for the 25th anniversary of the Center’s founding, the Provost and Board of Trustees approved a name change to the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. The new name better reflects what the Center covers: not all of our faculty are Russian-focused experts and our events highlight the former Soviet world in its entirety, not just from a “post-Soviet” perspective. Our core faculty members include a historian of Inner Asia, an anthropologist of the Baltic Republics, and a political scientist of Eastern European comparative politics. The name change allows their courses and their research to be better reflected in our title. It also aligns us better with other centers (such as Ohio State’s Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, which has a larger geographical reach than our Center) as well as our major national organization (the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies).