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Friday, February 25th:
Keynote Speaker- 5 PM: Aneta Pavlenko, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Norway

Panel 1- 6:05 PM-7:35 PM: Language, culture, and identity in the former USSR
1. Arina Dmitrenko (University of Toronto): Empire and Urban Space: A Review of the Central Asian Space in the Russian Empire
2. Sean Nonnenmacher (University of Pittsburgh) & Emma Santelmann (University of Michigan): Reckoning with the past and negotiating a new linguistic future: Purist and moderate ideologies toward loanwords in post-Soviet Armenia
3. Timur Akishev (The University of Mississippi): Derussifying And Americanizing Northern Kazakhstan
Chair: Dr. Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh

Saturday, February 26th:
Panel 2- 11:00 AM-1:30 PM: Deconstructing the Social and the Political
1. Lukas Baake (London School of Economics): Failed deconstruction. The 1998 Crisis and the Russian Quest for Economic Reform
2. Nathan Rtishchev (New York University): The Gogol Center’s Battling Historiographies: The Twentieth Century Avant Garde’s Role in the Twenty First Century
3. Kevin Brown (University of Pittsburgh): The Crusade Against God: Bolshevism as a Secular Religion
4. Yana Lysenko (New York University): Deconstructing Post-Soviet Politics and Communal Life in the Soviet Dormitory: Symbolic Spatial Ruin in Yuri Bykov’s The Fool [Durak]
5. Mariam Shakhmuradyan (University of Cambridge): Archaeology as the Science of the Future. A Case Study: Archaeology of Armenia
Chair: Dr. Sean Guillory, University of Pittsburgh

Panel 3- 1:40 PM- 3:40 PM: Impact of Highly Skilled Migration on the Formation of New Concepts of Regionality and Geopolitical Perceptions
1. Anna Khotivrishvili: The impact of highly skilled migration on the formation of new geopolitical perceptions and concepts of regionality on the example of Georgia
2. Nicoleta-Florina Moraru: Exploring the Trajectories and Lessons of the New Russian Immigration Programme for HSM
3. Bibinaz Almanova: Educational And Highly Qualified Migrations’ Nexus: Key Trends And Approaches In Kazakhstan
4. Adam Israilov: Migration processes in the Chechen Republic and the role of highly skilled migration in 1991-1994.
Chair: Dr. Leila Delovarova, Kazakh National University

Panel 4- 4:00 PM-5:30 PM: Rethinking Balkan Identity
1. Joe Patrick (University of Pittsburgh): Constructing a Montenegrin Identity Online
2. Rexhina Ndoci (The Ohio State University): Linguistic difference as proxy for ethnic difference: The case of Albanian migrant memes
3. Patrick Gehringer (Oakland University) & Lindon Dedvukaj (Oakland University): Reevaluating Albanians Place in IE through a Historically Isolated Dialect
Chair: Dr. Ljiljana Đurašković, University of Pittsburgh

Panel 5- 5:35 PM-6:35 PM: Narratives at the Periphery
1. Fernando Alejandro Remache-Vinueza (The University of Glasgow):Changes and interactions between the mainstream narrative and alternative identities: The case of Lithuania
2. Catherine Mott (University of Kentucky): Lead Letters: An Unusual Window
Chair: Jamie Horowitz, University of Pittsburgh/GOSECA

6:40 PM: Closing Remarks

Learn the history of mărțișor and watch the Romanian Room committee make them and talk about this old tradition.

Falling on March 1 of every year, Mărțișor is an old Romanian tradition of gifting a red and white string attached to a small piece of jewelry or a flower. This is believed to bring health and luck to the wearer.