Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Kyiv Adventure, Part 2: Erik at Work

It has been some time since we have written about Erik's primary reason for being in Ukraine - his Fulbright Fellowship for teaching and research. In part this is because a blog entry noting that "he worked on Chapter 4 today for several hours" or "he taught a class about election rules" is not terribly enthralling. But, Erik has made progress on his book manuscript as well as research related to this year's parliamentary election. He has also continued teaching his course, although the time, place, and consequently the number of students, has changed.

Our primary purpose for visiting Kyiv was to attend the Fulbright Orientation and Conference. The orientation was a nice opportunity to catch up with other scholars who are scattered about the country, but was not terribly useful in a substantive sense since we have been here for over two months (and Erik has visited Ukraine several times in the last few years). After the orientation sessions, the organization held a conference for Ukrainian alumni. Erik attended a bit of this, but also missed sessions to visit some of Kyiv's sights with Lea and Carter. On Monday (10/22), Erik gave two lectures about his research, one at the Ukrainian Academy of International Trade and one at the Kyiv School of Economics. Around 80 students of law and economics attended his first talk, around 8 graduate students attended his second talk.

1 comment:

Kristin said...

Did you have a picture taken to hide all those students asleep at your "robotic" presentation? :) --if the emotican doesn't show up, that's a smile from your sister making fun of you.