The Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event since 2002 designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or Central Eurasia.
After the initial submission of papers, selected participants are grouped into panels according to their research topics. The participants then give 10- to 15-minute presentations based on their research to a panel of faculty and graduate students. The presentations are open to the public.
SYMPOSIUM: Friday, March 28, 2025
2:45 PM I KEYNOTE ADDRESS
5601 WWPH
“Russian Orthodox Sacred Objects in Central Asia: A Legacy of Imperialism?”
Dr. Daniel Scarborough Associate Professor, School of Sciences and Humanities, Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan)
Orthodox Christianity first came to Central Asia along with the Russian conquest in the 19th century. Along with Slavic settlers came Orthodox sacred objects, such as miraculous icons and the relics of saints. Churches, monasteries, and parish communities were built around these objects. During the colonization process, control over Orthodox sacred objects was contested by the imperial regime, settler communities, and the native population. These objects ultimately became targets of violent conflict during the anti-colonial uprising of 1916, and the revolutionary violence and terror of the following decade. The physical survival of the Orthodoxy in Central Asia was possible due to the collaborative efforts of both settlers and natives, despite the efforts of the colonial regime to utilize the Church for the consolidation of Russian rule. The Orthodox objects and spaces that dot the landscape today comprise part of Central Asia’s shared cultural heritage.
Dr. Daniel Scarborough is associate professor of Russian history and religion at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. His interests include the religious and intellectual history of late imperial Russia, the local history of Moscow and Tver, and Russia’s Silver Age. After earning his PhD in Russian History from Georgetown University, he taught Russian and European history at Georgetown, Marymount, and Howard universities and Russian religious history and global Christianity at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio before starting his appointment at Nazarbayev University in 2015.
4:15 PM I KEYNOTE ADDRESS
5601 WWPH
“Experiments in Clean Living? Group Houses as Radical Activism in 1970s West Germany”
Dr. Belinda Davis Professor, Department of History and Director of the Rutgers Center for European Studies Rutgers University, New Jersey
This paper will explore one of the means by which primarily young people in West Germany attempted to “revolutionize” everyday life and beyond, through new, explicitly political forms of cohabitation designated Wohngemeinschaften (WGs). WGs served as critical hubs of more conventional popular politics of the era, but also housed intense experiments in remaking the self and relations with others, transcending the nuclear family and the centrality of the couples relationship, and working through ideas and convictions across populations often conceived as incompatible. Part of broader efforts to remake German society from the bottom up, these experiments mark one site of successful youth efforts to transform the world around them.
Dr. Belinda Davis is professor of histor
y at Rutgers University and director of the Rutgers Center for European Studies. She is author or co-editor of five books, including the coedited Social Movements After ’68: Selves and Solidarities in West Germany and Beyond (2022); The Internal Life of Politics: Extraparliamentary Opposition in West Germany, 1962-1983 (forthcoming with Cambridge). She is currently completing work on Voices of the Organized Poor: Learning from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign’s Everyday Struggles for Survival and Alternative Futures; and working on an environmental history of modern Europe for Cambridge University Press. She is a member of the Rutgers team participating in the Jean Monnet-funded ValEUs grant, of which the University of Pittsburgh is also a consortium member.
QUESTIONS? Contact Zita Tóth-Shawgo
SPONSORS:
Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
European Studies Center
University Center for International Studies
Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies
Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia
Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
RECENT PROCEEDINGS
RECENT PROGRAMS
RESOURCES
There are many online resources to assist you in preparing your paper for submission to the Symposium. Please note that you are required to submit your paper with reference notes and a bibliography using the Chicago Manual of Style for all citations.
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Writing Center has a Writer's Handbook documenting Chicago Style.
- Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers a guide for using Chicago Style.
- The Chicago Manual of Style Online serves as a speedy reference for Chicago Style.
- University of Pittsburgh students may visit the Writing Center (Now located in the O'Hara Student Center) for help with citations, format, grammar, etc. Services are free of charge and the center is staffed by part-time faculty and graduate students.
- OnlineColleges.net has created a guide for conducting online academic research and a student's guide on avoiding plagiarism.
- See our guide to writing abstracts for tips on producing an effective abstract.
- See the Tufts University abstract guide, which includes varied sample abstracts.