Professor David Ransel
Director of REEI and Professor of History
E-mail username: ransel

David L. Ransel, the Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History, received his B.A. from Coe College, M.A. from Northwestern University, and Ph.D. from Yale University. He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1967 to 1985 before moving to Indiana. David has served as editor of Slavic Review and editor of the American Historical Review and sat on the Board of Directors and Finance Committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) and the Governing Council and Finance Committee of the American Historical Association. He was president of the AAASS in 2004. David’s major scholarly contributions include The Politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin Party (Yale, 1975), The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research (Illinois, 1978), Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton, 1988), Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (Indiana, 1993), Village Mothers: Three Generations of Change in Russia and Tataria (Indiana, 2000), Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Indiana, 1998), Polish Encounters, Russian Identity (Indiana University Press, 2005), and the forthcoming A Russian Merchant’s Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov, Based on His Diary (Indiana University Press, 2008).

Mark Trotter
Assistant Director/Outreach Coordinator
E-mail username: martrott

Mark Trotter received his B.A. from McGill University and M.A. at the University of Michigan. He taught Russian language, literature, and culture, as well as general linguistics at Grinnell College from 1987 to 1993. From 1993 to 2004, Mark taught English language and linguistics at the Dániel Berzsenyi Teacher Training College in Szombathely, Hungary, returning to the United States in the summers to teach Russian, first at the University of Michigan and subsequently at Indiana University in the Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European, and Central Asian Languages (SWSEEL), where he has taught conversation and listening comprehension since 1998. From 2004 to 2007 Mark served as the Resident Director/Academic Coordinator of the newly initiated Flagship Program in Russian Language, based at Saint Petersburg State University. His publications include articles in the fields of Russian language teaching methodology and English linguistics, as well as translations from Hungarian and Russian.

Andrew Burton
Academic Advisor/Assistant Director for Student Services
E-mail username: angburto

Andrew Burton received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati. He then received an MA from the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University. Andrew has spent extended periods doing volunteer work and research in Hungary. In addition to his position in REEI, Andrew is currently pursuing doctoral studies in the Department of Political Science at IU. He has done research and published on ethnopolitics in Eastern Europe.

Marianne Davis (photo forthcoming)
Administrative Secretary
E-mail username: marwdavi

Prior to coming to IU Marianne worked for Teletron (a telecom analyst company).  She has worked at IU for a number of years, first in the Department of Religious Studies and more recently in the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center before coming to REEI.  Marianne has three grown children, two of whom are currently attending IU.