Elise Giuliano

Elise Giuliano is a Lecturer in the Political Science Department at Columbia University and Director of Graduate Studies of the MA program at The Harriman Institute. Her research focuses on the politics of ethnic identity, especially the question of how ethnicity impacts popular attitudes and political mobilization. Her award-winning book, Constructing Grievance: Ethnic Nationalism in Russia’s Republics (Cornell University Press, 2011), examines minority support for nationalist separatism in Russia’s ethnic republics. She has published articles on Islam in Russia (including Chechnya) and the popular response to natural disaster in Russia. Currently, Giuliano is researching how the crisis in Ukraine has influenced political opinion among Ukrainian citizens—especially in the understudied eastern regions of the country. She has published on the origins of support for separatism in the Donbas region and has done field research in Kharkiv, Ukraine. At Columbia, she teaches courses on Russian Politics, Ethnic Politics across Post-Soviet Eurasia, and an MA Thesis writing seminar.

Giuliano serves on the Advisory Board of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) which holds its annual conference at Columbia University each spring. She is a member of PONARS Eurasia, an international network of scholars. She has taught at Barnard College and the University of Miami and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, and Columbia University. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.