Lauren Woodard

• 2024 Spring
  • ANT 300 Selected Topics - Migration, Borders, Belonging
  • ANT 428/629 Transformation of Eastern Europe
• 2023 Spring
  • ANT 185 Global Encounters:Comparing World Views & Values Cross-Culturally
• 2022 Fall
  • ANT 300 Selected Topics - Migration and the Everyday
  • ANT 428/629 Transformation of Eastern Europe

Lauren Woodard is assistant professor of anthropology. Her research focuses on migration, processes of racialization, borders, settler colonialism, political anthropology, multiculturalism, liberalism, climate change, Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Moscow and Vladivostok, her book project, "Ambiguous Inclusion: Transforming Migrants into Compatriots on Russia's Border with China" (under advance contract with University of Toronto Press), examines how officials and migrants negotiate Russia's migration and diaspora policies on Russia's border with China.

Her research has been supported by the Kennan Institute Title VIII Research Fellowship, the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fellowship, and Fulbright research grants to Russia and Kazakhstan, and published in Cultural Anthropology and The Political and Legal Anthropology Review. She has also conducted research on international development and water politics in Central Asia.

Prior to joining Syracuse, she was a postdoctoral associate in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies and a lecturer in anthropology at Yale University. Woodard earned a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019.

"Migration, Race, and Belonging in Russia’s Far East", Sponsored by Kennan Institute, Title VIII Research Scholar.

Sponsored by Kennan Institute, Title VIII Summer Research Scholar.

"he Politics of Return: Resettlement, Development, and Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Russia", Sponsored by Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Sponsored by Fulbright.

Sponsored by Social Science Research Council.

• Journal Articles
  • Woodard, L. A., "As if I Were an Illegal’: Racial Passing in Immigrant Russia." Cultural Anthropology, 2022.
  • Woodard, L. A., "Yeast for the Russian Land’: the Return of Primorskii krai’s Old Believers." REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, 2020.
  • Woodard, L. A., "From Prikaz to Procedures: Becoming an International Organization in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan." Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2018.
• Book Review
  • Woodard, L. A., "Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene Avrutin." In Canadian Slavonic Papers. , 2023.

Annual Convention, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, "Europe, Coloniality, and Colonialism: an Anthropological Perspective" (November 30, 2023 - December 3, 2023)

Annual Convention, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), "Ukrainian Refugees, Filtration Camps, and Forced Migration on the Russia-China Border" (November 30, 2023 - December 3, 2023)

Kennan Institute, "Ambiguous Inclusion: Transforming Migrants into Compatriots on Russia’s Border with China" (June 8, 2023)

Smith College, "A Common Language, a Common Culture? Producing Similarity, Difference, and Race in Migrant Russia" (March 23, 2022)

Yale University, "A Common Language, a Common Culture? Producing Similarity, Difference, and Migrant Categories in Russia" (February 24, 2022)

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Russian Politics in the Late Putin Era, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, "A Common Language, a Common Culture: Whiteness in Productions of Russian Compatriotism" (December, 2021)

Global Vantage Point Lecture Series, Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College, "Like Yeast for the Russian Land: Climate Migration and Race along Russia’s Border with China" (November 2, 2021)

Aleksanteri Institute’s Conference on Eurasia and Global Migration, "Promoting Similarity and Constructing Compatriots in Russia’s Far East" (October, 2021)

Race in Focus Series, University of Pittsburgh and ASEEES, "Talking about Whiteness: Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" (February 19, 2021)

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, "Russian Politics in the Late Putin Era" (2021)

George Washington University, "The Politics of Return: Russia’s Resettlement of Compatriots Program in the Far East" (March 19, 2019)

International Relations Teaching Award, Department of International Relations (May, 2023)