Institute for European Studies
Georgy Tarasenko
IES Graduate Fellow 2025-26
Georgy Tarasenko is a PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University. His major field of study is Comparative Politics, with minor fields in Political Thought and Methods. Previously, he was a researcher and lecturer at the Center for Institutional Studies at HSE University in Moscow and the Digital Humanities Center at ITMO University in Saint Petersburg.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- PACS Past Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: gt298@cornell.edu
Chiara Visentin
IES Graduate Fellow 2025-2026
Chiara Visentin is a PhD candidate in the Medieval Studies Program at Cornell, with a background in philosophy and sociology. She is interested in the transformations of political cultures, identities and institutions in the central Middle Ages and especially the 12th century, with a focus on the Anglo-Norman and Angevin polities, extending between the British Isles and Western France, as well as their neighbors like Capetian France, and more distant but related polities such as Norman Sicily.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: cv284@cornell.edu
Rachel Horner
IES Graduate Fellow, Spring 2026
Rachel Horner (she/her) is a PhD candidate in music and sound studies at Cornell University. She holds an MA in musicology and a BM in vocal music education and Spanish from Rutgers University. Rachel’s research investigates the intersections between sound, language, and identity, especially in the context of Spanish and Latin American cultural festivals.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: rkh74@cornell.edu
Nora Siena
IES Graduate Fellow 2025-2026
Nora Siena's dissertation, “Inoperative Brevitas: The Contamination of Short Literary and Philosophical Forms and the Twentieth-century Italian Racconto,” identifies a paradigmatic mode of twentieth-century European poetics and philosophical programs in the disruption of the historical tie between textual brevity and exemplarity.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: ns929@cornell.edu
Maria Luisa Palumbo
IES Graduate Fellow- Fall 2024
Maria Luisa Palumbo is a scholar, architect, and curator working at the intersection of architectural history and theory to question and promote notions of social, environmental, and gender justice. She is the author of New Wombs, Electronic bodies and architectural disorder (Birkhauser, 2000) and Paesaggi Sensibili. Architetture a sostegno della vita (duepunti edizioni, 2012) and the editor of several collective books. In 2012 she curated reMade in Italy, final section of Luca Zevi's Italian Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Additional Information
Madeleine Lemos
IES Graduate Fellow 2025-2026
Madeleine is a historian of modern Europe focused on Spain. Her research focuses on understanding the relationship between fascism and the international via formal and informal political means. She is particularly interested in examining the continuation of the Spanish fascist state as an international and domestic body via Francoism's repositioning of itself throughout the 20th century.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: mjl375@cornell.edu
Angela Kothe
IES Graduate Fellow 2025-2026
Angela Kothe is a third-year PhD Student in the Department of Government. Her research interests include Queer politics and religion in Europe and the United States. She is currently developing a project that explores the political economy of Queer identity formation in post-War England.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Student
- IES Current Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Student
Contact
Email: aek229@cornell.edu
Asia’s Commercial Heft Helps Keep Russia’s War Economy Going
Nicholas Mulder, IES/PACS
Even if the West successfully uses secondary sanctions to coerce Asian countries, says Nicholas Mulder, a sanctions scholar at Cornell University, the long-term risk is that economic warfare undermines both the primacy of the dollar-based financial system and America’s influence in Asia.
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In New Book, Professor Translates Ancient Advice for the Lovelorn
Michael Fontaine, IES
When it comes to romance, classics professor Michael Fontaine (IES) thinks some of the best tips come from looking back—way back.
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Snap Elections a ‘Political Mistake’ for Macron
Mabel Berezin, IES
Mabel Berezin, professor of sociology at Cornell University and an expert on international populism, says Macron’s decision was a “political mistake” that could hand control of France’s government to Marine Le Pen’s right-Wing National Rally (RN) party.