Jessica Pisano

PhD, Political Science, Yale University

MA, Political Science, Yale University

AB, History and Literature, Harvard College

The substantive questions that drive my research cohere around the enclosure of public resources, the constitution of material and social power, and political and social processes of dispossession.  In particular, I am interested in how transformations in ownership regimes shape everyday people’s lives, and how those effects translate into changes in local, national, and global politics.  I conduct my research in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where I use a variety of immersion-based methods as well as archival sources.  My current research examines the evolution of property regimes in the twentieth century, in which I analyze interactions between local governance, land ownership and state-sponsored violence in a cluster of European borderlands villages governed successively by fascist, state socialist, and neoliberal regimes. 

Book

 ·         The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth.  2008.  Cambridge University Press.  Winner of the AAASS (ASEEES) Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies.   

Articles and book chapters  

·         “Opting Out under Stalin and Khrushchev: Post-War Sovietization in a Borderlands Magyar Village,” Problems of Post-Communism, 58:1 (January-February 2011), pp. 58-66.  

·         “The Social Life of Borders: Political economy at the edge of the EU” (with André Simonyi) in Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann (eds.), Transnational Europe: Promise—Paradox—Limits (Palgrave, 2011), 222-238.  

·         “Social contracts and authoritarian projects in post-Soviet space: The use of administrative resource” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 43:4 (2010), pp. 373-382.  

·         “Legitimizing facades: Civil Society in post-Orange Ukraine” in Paul D’Anieri (ed.), Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy, and the State in Ukraine (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 229-253.  

·         “From Iron Curtain to Golden Curtain: Remaking Identity in the European Union Borderlands,” East European Politics and Societies, 23:2 (May 2009), pp. 266-290.  Winner of Hungarian Studies Association Mark Pittaway prize.

         “How to Tell an Axe Murderer: An Essay on Ethnography, Truth, and Lies,” in Edward Schatz (ed.), Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 53-73.  Co-recipient of American Political Science Association Giovanni Sartori Award.  

·         “Property: What is it good for?” Social Research, 76:1 (Spring 2009), pp. 175-202.

   ·         “The Two Faces of Petr Arkad’evich: Land and Dispossession in Russia’s Southwest, ca. 2000,” International Journal of Labor and Working Class History, (Spring 2007), pp. 70-90.

   ·         “Klychkov i Pustota: Post-Soviet Bureaucrats and the Production of Institutional Facades,” in Thomas Lahusen and Peter Solomon (eds.), What is Soviet Now? Identities, Legacies, Memories (London: LIT Verlag, 2007), pp. 40-56.

   ·         “‘Friendship of Peoples’ After the Fall: Violence and Pan-African Community in Post-Soviet Moscow” (with Eric Allina-Pisano) in Maxim Matusevich (ed.), Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: 300 Years of Encounters (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2006), pp. 175-198.

   ·        “Sub Rosa Resistance and the Politics of Economic Reform: Land Redistribution in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” World Politics,56:4 (July 2004), pp. 554-81.

   ·         “ Land Reform and the Social Origins of Private Farmers in Russia and Ukraine,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 31:3 (July 2004).489-514.

   ·         “Agrarnye reformy v Rossii i na Ukraine: sravnitel’nyi analiz,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 4:1 (March 2004), 1-12.

   ·         “Reorganization and its Discontents: A Case Study in Voronezh oblast’,”in David O’Brien and Stephen Wegren (eds.), Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp 298-324.

Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University

  PONARS Eurasia

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

American Political Science Association

·         Hungarian Studies Association Mark Pittaway biennial prize for the best scholarly article relating to Hungary for “From Iron Curtain to Golden Curtain: Remaking Identity in the European Union Borderlands,” in the Spring 2009 issue of East European Politics and Societies, 2011.  

·         Fulbright Scholarship Board, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Fulbright award to the Russian Federation (declined), 2011.  

·         American Political Science Association, Giovanni Sartori Award for the best book in qualitative and multi-methods research for Political Ethnography, co-recipient, 2010.  

·         University of Ottawa, Faculty of Social Sciences Research Chair in the Politics of Property, 2010.  

·         AAASS Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies for best book published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography, for The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village, 2009.  

·         Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2008-2012.  

·         National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Grant, 2007-2009.  

·         Harvard University Ukrainian Institute Shklar Research Fellowship, 2006.  

·         Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2005 and 2006.  

·         American Political Science Association Small Research Grant, 2006.  

·         Colgate University Picker Research Grant, 2006.  

·         Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies Research Scholarship, 2004.  

·         Social Science Research Council Eurasia Program Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2004-2006.  

·         Colgate University Dean’s discretionary research grant, 2004.  

·         Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies Research Scholarship (declined), 2002.  

·         Yale University Dissertation Fellowship, 2000.  

·         Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1998.  

·         IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Research Grant, 1998.  

·         Yale University Ukrainian Initiative dissertation research grant, 1998.  

·         Yale Center for International and Area Studies Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1997.  

·         Fox International Fellowship, Yale University and Moscow State University, 1997.  

·         National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 1996-2001.  

·         Yale University Graduate School Fellowship, 1995.