Slavic-Eurasian Research Center 2023 Summer International Symposium“Borders, Boundaries and War acrossEurasia”
Date: December 7–8, 2023
Format: Hybrid (on-site and online via Zoom webinar)
Venue: Room 403, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (SRC), Hokkaido University, Sapporo

Day 1 (December 7)
Borderlands, Gender and Migration
Panel 1: Neighbor’s Eyes on the Ukrainian War
Presenters:
Akihito Iwashita is Professor at the Slavic Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University.
His research covers the Sino Russian borderlands and the Japan Russia "Northern Territories"
issue. He has authored and edited several books and numerous articles, including Geo-Politics
in Northeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2023), Japan's Border Issues: Pitfalls and Prospects(London: Routledge, 2017), Introduction to Border Studies: Territory, Sovereignty and
Ideology (Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 2016, in Japanese), and Japanese Northern Territorial Issues:
Neither Four nor Zero, nor Two (Tokyo: Chuokoron shinsha, 2005, in Japanese). His edited
volumes include Border Tourism (Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2017, in Japanese) andPhobia for Territory: Debunking Myths of Border Nationalism (Sapporo: Hokkaido University
Press, 2014, in Japanese).
Joni Virkkunen works as Research Manager at VERA Centre for Russian and Border Studies,
Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland (UEF). Since receiving his PhD in 2002, histasks have related to research and research coordination within Russian and border studies anddoctoral training at the UEF. His research relates to borders, border governance, cross-bordercooperation, EU-Russian relations and transnational migration in Russian and post-Soviet
contexts. In his recent research, he has been looking at the 2015-2016 Arctic route through/from
Russia to the EU and the related insecurities, migratory strategies and failed integration of
Afghan and African immigrants in Russia. Dr Virkkunen has acted as the Chairman of theFinnish Association for Russian and East European Studies and member of the International
Council of ICCEES (International Council for Central and East European Studies).

1Minna Piipponen (Human Geography) works as Research Manager at the Karelian Institute,
University of Eastern Finland. Her work includes also coordination tasks for the Borders,
Mobilities and Cultural Encounters Research Community, BOMOCULT RC, at the Universityof Eastern Finland. Dr. Piipponen did her PhD in 2007 on the transformation of the forest sector
and resource-based communities in North-West Russia. Before her current position, she workede.g., as a University Lecturer in Russian and Border Studies and the Manager of Education at
the VERA Centre for Russian and Border Studies (University of Eastern Finland). Dr.
Piipponen’s recent research interests include international migration in Russia and its impacts
on the external EU borders, as well as cross-border cooperation between Finland and Russia.
In addition to articles in edited books, she has published articles e.g., in Nationalities Papers,
European Planning Studies and Idäntutkimus (Finnish Journal for Russian and East European
Studies).
Noboru Miyawaki is a Professor at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, specializing in research
related to the OSCE and its implications for North East Asia. He holds a Doctorate in Political
Science from Waseda University, Japan, and has conducted research at institutions including
Hamburg University, George Washington University, and the National University of Mongolia.
His book Russian POWs in Matsuyama received the 2004 Ehime Shinbun Publication Award,
and with his co-editors he got the JASAG Excellent Award. He published CSCE Human Rights
Regime (Kokusai Shoin) in 2003, and International Politics on War and Peace (Nihon Keizai
Hyouron sha). Additionally, he received the medal of 30th Anniversary of Department ofInternational Relations of National University of Mongolia.
Chair and Commentator:
Yoko Aoshima is Associate Professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido
University. She is editor of Entangled Interactions between Religion and National
Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2020)and co-editor (with Darius Staliūnas) of The Tsar, the Empire, and the Nation: Dilemmas of
Nationalization in Russia's Western Borderlands, 1905–1915 (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2021).

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Keynote Lecture: Another Brick in the Wall: B/Ordering through Otheringin a World in Turmoil
Presenter:
Élisabeth Vallet is associate professor at RMCC-Saint Jean, director of the Center for
Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies,affiliate professor at the Department of Geography at the University of Quebec at Montreal(UQAM). She has been the Quebec lead for the Borders in Globalization program and iscurrently a co-researcher for the Borders in the 21th Century Program (University of Victoria).
She has been the recipient of the Richard Morrill Outreach Award from the AAG's Political
Geography Specialty Group. She is a regular columnist for the Canadian National Network(Radio-Canada) and for the Canadian newspaper Le Devoir. Her research focuses on borders
and globalization, border walls and governance. She is currently co-editing a Handbook on
Border Walls (under contract with Edward Edgar Publishing).
Chair:
Edward Boyle is Associate Professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies(Nichibunken), Kyoto, and editor of Japan Review. He researches boundaries and borderland
spaces in Japan and its neighbourhood, the Asia-Pacific, and Northeast India. Recent
publications include Heritage, Contested Sites, and Borders of Memory in the Asia Pacific(with Steven Ivings, Brill 2023), Geo-Politics in Northeast Asia (with Iwashita Akihiro andYong-Chool Ha, Routledge 2022) and Japan’s Borders: Between state and people (in Japanesewith Naomi Chi, Hokkaido University Press 2022). Ongoing projects include research into therole and significance of borders of memory in Asia (see www.bordersofmemory.com), and along-term collaborative interdisciplinary investigation entitled “Imagining Islands inJapan”. More details can be found at www.borderthinking.com.

3Panel 2: War and Feminists
Presenters:
Oksana Kis is a feminist historian and anthropologist, a Cornerstones Visiting Chair in History
at the University of Richmond and a senior research fellow and a head of the Department ofSocial Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine(in Lviv). She is a president of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History. She
explored Ukrainian women’s experiences of survival and resistance under extreme historicalcircumstances, including in times of the Holodomor (Great Famine 1932-33), in the Ukrainian
nationalist anti soviet underground in the mid 20th century and in the Stalin’s Gulag, as well as
gender transformations in post-socialist countries. Her recent book Survival as Victory:
Ukrainian Women in the Gulag was published within the Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies
in 2021. She was a recipient of several academic awards, research grants and scholarship,including Fulbright research fellowship at Rutgers University (2003-04) and Columbia
University (2011-12) and the Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Professorship at the University ofAlberta (2013-14).
Ella Rossman is a doctoral candidate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
University College London. She was previously a researcher at the International Center for theHistory and Sociology of the Second World War and Its Consequences and taught at the Facultyof Humanities in the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Rossman participated in Russian
independent education and gender studies initiatives, like Free University Moscow and
AntiUniversity Moscow. Her doctoral research is focused on the late Soviet girlhood; she isalso working on a side project about the history of feminism and feminist thought in post-Soviet
Russia. Rossman's work was published in the Ab Imperio, History of Science andHumanities and New Perspectives academic journals; her most recent article is forthcoming in
the Girlhood Studies. She wrote for the sociopolitical commentaries and outlets
like openDemocracy, Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, and Riddle.
Commentators:
Paula Michaels is an Associate Professor of History at Monash University (Melbourne,
Australia). Her work on the social history of Soviet medicine is animated by an interesting in
the ways that political, socio-economic, and cultural forces shape both the clinical encounterand the transnational movement of personnel and technologies. In addition to editing books andauthoring numerous articles, she has written two prize-winning books: Curative Powers:
Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (2003) and Lamaze: An International History(2012). With support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, American Councils for International
Education and, beginning in 2024, the Australian Research Council, Michaels is currently

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pursuing two interrelated projects on Cold War Soviet medical internationalism; One focuseson US-Soviet medical engagement and the other on Soviet-Cuban medical relations. Together
they demonstrate the varied, expansive ways that the USSR deployed medical personnel,
education, and research as instruments of soft power.
Ikuo Ochi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tohoku University, specializing in
cultural anthropology and Japanese folklore. Based on fieldwork in Japan and the southwest
islands of Okinawa, her research examines the characteristics of Okinawan ancestral rituals in
East Asia, the impact of war on folk culture, and how the dead are commemorated throughbattlefield tourism. Her publications include: Anthropology of Globalization and Relations（グローバリゼーション とつながりの人類学） (2021) Shichigatsusha (with I.Nagasaka,
K.Seki,and N.Matsui) and The Transformation of Toms in Okinawa（動く墓－沖縄の都市
移 住 者 と 祖 先 祭 祀) (2018)
Shinwasha. For more information, see
https://www.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/en/research/researcher/profile/---id-150.html
Chair:
Mie Nakachi is a historian of 20th century Russia, who earned her PhD in history from the
University of Chicago and currently teaches at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan..
Her specialty areas are population policy, women, family, gender, and reproductive health. She
is the author of Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union(OUP, 2021), which examines the Soviet Union’s extreme population policy after the loss of 27
million in WWII and its effects on women’s reproductive lives, gender relations, anddemography. An interest in comparative policy resulted in the coedited volume Reproductive
States: Global Perspectives on the Invention and Implementation of Population Policy (OUP,
2016).

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Panel 3: Anti-War Protests and the New Waves of Migration and LGBTQ
Presenters:
Irina Meyer-Olimpieva is Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian, andEurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington
University. She is also the director of the Center for Independent Social Research in the UnitedStates (CISRus), which she founded in 2018 with the goal of bringing together social scientists
studying Russia and post-Soviet societies. Her research has been focused on various issues ofpost-socialist transformation such as labor protests and labor relations, science and innovation,
informal economy and corruption. She is the author of multiple peer-reviewed articles and amonograph about the Russian labor movement. Her works have appeared in Europe-Asia
Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet
Democratization and other journals. Her current research is focused on the anti-war resistancein Russia and war-induced emigration. In the USA, she explores Russian speaking immigrantcommunity.
Alexander Sasha Kondakov, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Sociology,
University College Dublin, Ireland. His truly international experience includes holding
positions in the University of Helsinki’s major research centre in Russian and Eurasian studies,
Aleksanteri Institute, The European University at St. Petersburg, as well as research jobs at the
Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the University of WisconsinMadison in the United States. Kondakov’s work is primarily focused on law and queer
sexualities. His studies were published in such journals as Sexualities, Social & Legal Studies,
Feminist Legal Studies, and European Journal of Criminology. Kondakov’s research on antiLGBT violence in Russia concluded with an open-access book Violent Affections: Queersexuality, techniques of power, and law in Russia. The book is available for free download on
UCL Press website, as well as in other formats for various prices.
Commentators:
Mayu Michigami is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Economic Sciences, Niigata
University. She specializes in Russian Economy and Russian Area studies. Especially Mayu’s
research interest is in housing market development and housing policy, urban development andeconomy in Russia. She is the author of the book, Housing Poverty City – Moscow. Toyo Shoten,
2013. (In Japanese). Other research achievements of Mayu include, “Russian Corporate Welfare
and a Comparative Analysis between Eastern and Western Regions in Russia,” Japanese
Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol.55, No.2, June 2018, pp. 29-49. (In Japanese);“Problems of Rental Housing and Living Conditions of Foreign Labour Migrants in Russian
Cities (the 2010s),” Россия и АТР, 2020, No.1, стр. 85-103.

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Hyunjoo Naomi Chi is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy,
Hokkaido University. Her area of specialization is East Asian politics, with an emphasis on
migration, demographic changes, multiculturalism, gender, ethnic and sexual minorities, aswell as human security in East Asia. Her latest publication include, “Japan’s New Wave of
Immigration?: Focusing on the Strategies of Local Government in Japan,” Annals on Public
Policy (Vol. 14, March 2020); “What the Global Pandemic has Revealed about East Asia: From
Mistrust to Empathy,” Annuals on Public Policy (Vol. 15, May 2021); “Living Under Covid-19
in Asia: Tackling the Challenges of the ‘Shadow Pandemic’ in Japan and Indonesia,” Annals on
Public Policy (Vol.16, March 2022); Japan’s Borders (Hokkaido University Press, 2023, coedited with Edward Boyle).She served as the President of the Association for Borderlands
Studies (ABS) from 2021-2022.
Chair:
Norio Horie is Professor at the Global Research Centre for Advanced Sustainability Science(GRASS), University of Toyama. His research focuses on labor in Russia ranging from humanresource management to labor migration issues in Russia with trans-disciplinary approaches.
He has authored and edited several books and numerous articles, notably Horie, N. “ChineseLand Deals and Migration in the Russian Far East,” A. Iwashita, Y. Ha and E. Boyle (eds.),
Geo-Politics in Northeast Asia, Routledge, 2022, pp. 120-138, and co-authored with I. Iwasaki“Returns to schooling in European emerging markets: a meta-analysis,” Education Economics,
31(1), 2022, pp. 102-128, and co-authored with O. Veredyuk, “GATS Mode 4 in Russia’s
migration policy: liberalization and its limitation,” Sergei Sutyrin, Olga Trofimenko andAlexandra Koval (eds.), Russian Trade Policy: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects,
Routledge, 2019, pp. 264-282.

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Day 2 (December 8)
Cold War History in Northeast Asia
Panel 4: Re-discovering Japan as Actor
Presenters:
Yasuhiro Izumikawa is Professor at the School of International Politics, Economics, andCommunication (SIPEC), Aoyama Gakuin University. While his research is primarily focusedon international relations theory, he has also published articles on alliance politics in northeast
Asia, U.S.-East Asian relations, and Japanese security policy. He has published peer-reviewed
articles from such journals as International Security (IS), International Studies Quarterly,
Security Studies, etc. One of his most recent articles, “Network Connections and the Emergenceof the Hub-and Spokes Alliance System in East Asia” (IS Fall 2020), won the 2021 Outstanding
Article Award of the American Political Science Association’s International History and Politics
section.
Ayako Kusunoki is Professor of International Research Center for Japanese Studies(Nichibunken), Kyoto, Japan. She received a doctoral degree in political science at the Graduate
School of Law, Kobe University. She is the author of Gendai Nihon Seijishi dai 1 kan: Senryo
kara Dokuritsu he (Contemporary Japanese Political History vol. 1: Occupation and the Peace
Treaty of Japan), 2013 and Yoshida Shigeru to Anzen Hosho Seisaku no Keisei: Nichibei noAnzen Hosho Koso to sono Sogo Sayo, 1943-1952 (Yoshida Shigeru and the Making of Japan’s
Postwar Security Policy: the Interaction of Ideas for Peace and Stability between the UnitedStates and Japan, 1943-1952), Minerva Shobo, 2009. One of her recent research interests has
been the Peace Treaty with Japan, which produced “US Policy for the Occupation of Japan andChanges to It,” Yamauchi, Masayuki and Yuichi Hosoya eds. Modern Japan’s Place in WorldHistory. Springer (Open Access), March 24, 2023, and “Tasuu kowa to kandai na kowa: Nihon
no koso to sentaku (Majority Peace and Benevolent Peace: Japan’s Ideas and Decisions),” ShinKawashima and Yuichi Hosoya eds., San Francisco kowa to higashi Asia (San Francisco Peace
Treaty and East Asia) (University of Tokyo Press, 2022).
Amy King is Associate Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, and Deputy
Director (Research) in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, at the Australian National
University. She has published widely on China-Japan relations, Chinese foreign and security
policy, and the economics-security nexus in Asia. Amy is the author of China-Japan Relations
After World War II: Empire, Industry and War, 1949–1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2016),
and her works have appeared in European Journal of International Relations, Modern AsianStudies, Journal of Cold War Studies, and the British Journal of Politics and International

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Relations, among others. The holder of an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowshipand a Westpac Research Fellowship, Associate Professor King leads a team researching China’s
historical and contemporary role in shaping the international economic order. She completed
her MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies and DPhil in International Relations from the Universityof Oxford.
Masaya Inoue is Professor of Japanese political history at Keio University. He is diplomatic
historian of postwar Japan with particular focus on Japan’s China policy. After receiving his
B.A., M.A. and Ph. D. in political science from Kobe University, he taught as lecturer at Kobe
University and then associated professor at Kagawa University. He joined Keio University in
2022. He is author of Nicchu Kokko Seijoka no Seijishi [The political history of Sino-Japanesenormalization](2010) and co-author of Sengo Nihon no Asia Gaiko [Japan’s diplomacy toward
Asia in the postwar](2015). In 2011, He won the Yoshida Shigeru Prize and the Suntory Prize
for Social Sciences and Humanities for Nicchu Kokko Seijoka no Seijishi.
Commentator:
James G. Hershberg is Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington
University in Washington, DC; former Director of the Cold War International History Project(CWIHP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, also in Washington, DC:
and author of *Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam* (Stanford University Press;
Wilson Center Press, 2012); *James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the
Nuclear Age* (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; paperback: Stanford University Press, 1995; e-book:
Plunkett Lake Press, 2018 ); and numerous articles on cold war and nuclear history. He iscurrently writing a book on Brazil, Cuba, and the Cold War, an outgrowth of his work on the
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Chair:David Wolff is Professor of History at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido
University. He teaches Russian, Soviet and Northeast Asian history. He authored To the Harbin
Station (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999; Tokyo: Kodansha, 2014) and Le KGB et les
pays baltes (Paris: Belin, 2005) and was a coeditor of World War Zero: The Russo-Japanese
War in Global Perspective in two volumes (Leiden: Brill, 2005; 2007) and Russia’s Great War
and Revolution in the Far East (Bloomington: Slavica, 2018). Most recently, he coedited
Sugihara Chiune and the Soviet Union: New Documents, New Perspectives (Sapporo: SlavicEurasian Research Center, 2022). He is now writing on Stalin’s Far East policy after WorldWar Two.

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Panel 5: Critical Junctures across the Region: Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea
Presenters:
David Wolff (see Panel 4)
Dr. Batbayar Tsedendamba is Principal researcher at the Institute of History and Ethnology,
Mongolian Academy of Sciences. He is an Academician of the Mongolian Academy of
Sciences since May 2021. He has served also as Ambassador of Mongolia to the Republic of
Cuba in 2015-2018. He was a resident visiting scholar at Woodrow Wilson Institute forInternational Studies, Washington D.C., in 2001-2002. His research interests include
geopolitics of Great powers concerning Mongolia and adjacent areas in the XXth century,
Mongolian nationalism, Stalin’s geopolitics towards the People’s Republic of Mongolia, cold
war history of East Asia, including Mongolia. He has written two volumes of the book
“Mongolia and Great Powers in the XXth Century” (Ulaanbaatar, 1st volume: 2015, 2ndvolume: 2020). His English language books ‘Modern Mongolia: A Concise History”(Ulaanbaatar, 2006), “The Dynamic Decade: Mongolian Sovereignty and Foreign Policy
between East and West, 1990-2000” (Ulaanbaatar, 2019) are widely circulated in Mongolia andabroad.
Yasuhiro Izumikawa is Professor at the School of International Politics, Economics, andCommunication (SIPEC), Aoyama Gakuin University. While his research is primarily focusedon international relations theory, he has also published articles on alliance politics in northeast
Asia, U.S.-East Asian relations, and Japanese security policy. He has published peer-reviewed
articles from such journals as International Security (IS), International Studies Quarterly,
Security Studies, etc. One of his most recent articles, “Network Connections and the Emergenceof the Hub-and Spokes Alliance System in East Asia” (IS Fall 2020), won the 2021 Outstanding
Article Award of the American Political Science Association’s International History and Politics
section.
Commentator:
Lee Jong won is Professor of Korean Studies and International History at the Graduate Schoolof Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University. His area of specialization includes politics anddiplomacy in East Asia, with an emphasis on the Korean peninsula. Previously he taught at
Tohoku University and Rikkyo University before he moved to Waseda University in 2012. Heholds a Ph. D. in international politics from the University of Tokyo. His book The Cold War
in East Asia and Korea-U.S.-Japan Relations (Japanese) published by the Tokyo University
Press in 1996, won the Ohira Masayoshi Memorial Award and the Best Foreign-language Book
Prize of the Organization of American Historians.

10Chair:Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear
history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global
Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang
Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Professor Radchenko’sbooks include To Run the World: the Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power(Cambridge UP,
forthcoming in 2024), Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy(Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in
Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). Professor Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, was
educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD in 2005 (LSE). Before
he joined SAIS, Professor Radchenko worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales.

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