Do you need to travel internationally for your graduate research or fieldwork?

The Einaudi Center sponsors international travel for individual Cornell graduate students. If you’re traveling between the United States and a host country for activities directly related to your dissertation or thesis research, Einaudi can help you get there. See full details here.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact travelgrants@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

The Laidlaw Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu to learn more.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Michał Lubina, Associate Professor at the South and Southeast Asia Unit, Institute of Middle and Far East, Jagiellonian University (JU), Kraków, Poland

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

Moscow-Naypyitaw rapprochement represents one of the major consequences of the 2021 Myanmar coup and one of the unexpected outcomes of the Ukraine war. Until then, Russia-Myanmar relations remained good but limited (confined to arms trade, military training, diplomatic support, and nuclear dreaming). The breakthrough came with the fourth military coup in Myanmar, followed by the Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine.

After February 2021, the isolated SAC turned to Moscow, and the Kremlin emerged as the primary international supporter of the Burmese military junta, acting as its political patron, with General Min Aung Hlaing now pilgrimaging to Russia (Moscow, Kazan and Vladivostok, and other places) almost on a routine basis. While Russia was initially still somewhat wary, Moscow’s global (semi-)isolation after the outbreak of the full-scale Ukraine war shifted this dynamic, elevating Myanmar's importance in Russian foreign policy calculations as well. Thus, a mutually convenient asymmetric relationship emerged, and Russia-Myanmar relations have reached an unprecedented level of closeness, unparalleled in their bilateral history. This is best illustrated by the personal chemistry between their leaders, even if expressed is such extraordinary ways as in March 2025, when Min Aung Hlaing compared Vladimir Putin to a rat king which was meant to be an unusual way to emphasize the political friendship with the Russian leader.

The unexpected and unusual combination of Russia and Myanmar caught observers by surprise. Why have these two countries, so geographically and culturally distant, with limited past contacts, became so close? What triggered their rapprochement? And what does it matter – to both Moscow and Naypyidaw, to the region, and even to the world? What are the consequences of this emerging partnership? And where is China in all this? What exact role does Beijing play in this unexpected Naypyidaw-Moscow rapprochement?

This talk will try to answer these questions.

About the Speaker

Michał Lubina is an associate professor at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. He is the author of eleven books, including seven on Myanmar, and three on Russia-China relations. His most important English-language books are “A Political Biography of Aung San Suu Kyi: A Hybrid Politician” (Routledge, 2020) and “The Moral Democracy” (2019), translated into Burmese and published in Yangon in 2021.

I am the Betty Freyhof Johnson ‘44 Professor of Political Science and Associate Provost for
Wellesley in the World. My research and teaching focuses on questions of great power competition
and international order. My latest book, When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order was
published by Cornell University Press in 2018. Here I examine how a rising power’s legitimation
strategy affects whether a great power confronts or accommodates a potential challenger. If a rising
power can portray its ambitions as legitimate, it can make the case that, far from being a
revolutionary power, its advances will only preserve, and perhaps even protect, the prevailing status
quo, then great power accommodation is likely. In contrast, if a rising power’s claims are
illegitimate—if they are inconsistent with prevailing rules and norms—then great powers will see its
actions as threatening, making containment and confrontation likely.

At Wellesley, I teach a number of courses rooted in this research, including a seminar on great power
competition, a course on “dangerous ideas” and international order, and a course on nuclear politics.
I also enjoy writing for public outlets, and my work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York
Times and the Washington Post.

Outside of Wellesley, I’m an avid fan of hiking, choral singing, all things golden retriever, and
“adventuring” with my family.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Frank L. Smith III is the director of the Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute (CIPI), part of the Strategic and Operational Research Department in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. Smith was previously a senior lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His interdisciplinary research examines the relationship between emerging technology and national security, particularly in cyberspace. He has a Ph.D. in political science and a B.S. in biological chemistry, both from the University of Chicago.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Dr. Veronica Anghel works at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations. As an assistant professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies she co-directs the European Governance and Politics Programme and leads the ‘Global Risks to the EU’ project. Her current research focuses on the European Union’s geopolitical role in the global order, and European integration and enlargement. She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and an Associate Editor for the Journal of European Public Policy. She has been awarded the Inaugural ‘Rising Star’ Award of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in 2021.

Previously, Anghel was a Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she taught courses on Risk in International Relations and Economy, and European Politics. She held fellowships at Stanford University (Fulbright), the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the EUI (Max Weber), and the Institute for Human Sciences Vienna (Europe’s Futures Fellow). Her research has been published in, among others, West European Politics, Political Science Quarterly, the Journal of European Public Policy, Political Communication, Foreign Affairs, the European Journal of Political Research. Her book ‘From Club to Commons: Enlargement, Reform and Sustainability in European Integration’ (Cambridge University Press 2025, with Erik Jones) proposes a new theory of European integration. She is the co-editor of Developments in European Politics 3 (Bloomsbury Academic) and sits on the board of the Council for European Studies (CES).

Anghel has practical experience working in international relations and politics from the time she served as a foreign affairs advisor for the Romanian Presidency, covering the country’s relations to NATO and the United States at the time of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. She was selected by the US Department of State to joint its International Visitor Leadership Program and has trained U.S. diplomats on European politics through the Foreign Service Institute.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Winner of the 2026 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize, Cornell University

Fiona Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Perry World House and affiliated with the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fiona’s research interests lie the intersection of technology and conflict, with an empirical focus on China. Fiona’s first book Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2024) examines China’s distinctive approach to the dilemma of coercing an adversary under the shadow of nuclear war, which relies on substitutes for nuclear threats.

Her research has appeared in academic and policy-oriented outlets including International Security, Security Studies, and The Washington Quarterly. She has held fellowships at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has conducted fieldwork at the Renmin University of China, supported by a China Confucius Studies Program research fellowship. Her research has also been supported by the Korea National Commission for UNESCO, Ploughshares Fund, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, Stanton Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Fiona is a research affiliate with the MIT Security Studies Program and holds nonresident affiliations with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and National Security College at the Australian National University.

Fiona received her Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT in 2018. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney, both with first class honors. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Dr. Rupal N. Mehta is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is currently a Faculty Fellow with the Nebraska Strategic Research Institute and a Research Collaborator at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) at the University of California, San Diego. She also serves as a consultant for the Director’s Strategic Resilience Initiative in the National Security and International Studies Office at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a consultant for the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction for the U.S. Department of State. Previously, she was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow in the Belfer Center's International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Her research interests lie in international security and conflict, with a specialization in nuclear nonproliferation/counter-proliferation, extended deterrence, nuclear latency, force structure, and deterrence and coercion strategy. Dr. Mehta's first two books, Delaying Doomsday: The Politics of Nuclear Reversal (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Atomic Uncertainty: Information Problems in Nuclear Negotiations (under review), explore the conditions under which states that have started nuclear weapons programs stop their pursuit. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly and her commentary has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, War on the Rocks, International Studies Quarterly, and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage. She has received support from the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Stanton Foundation, USSTRATCOM, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Senning Foundation, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Nebraska.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies