Lauren Woodard, an assistant professor of anthropology, has been honored with the Spring 2025 Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) First Book Subvention for her forthcoming book on migration policies along the Russia-China border.
The book, titled “Ambiguous Inclusion: Migration and Race on the Russia-China Border” (University of Toronto Press, 2026), is based on Woodard’s ethnographic fieldwork conducted over 17 months in Moscow and Vladivostok, Russia, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, from 2014 to 2017. It examines the experience of migrants in Russia’s Resettlement of Compatriots Program, focusing on the challenges they face despite receiving expedited citizenship and state benefits. Woodard argues that these challenges reveal racial hierarchies influenced by ethnicity, language, and culture.
The ASEEES, a nonprofit scholarly society, supports teaching, research, and publishing in regions including Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Eastern Europe. It holds an annual convention, offers book prizes, and publishes the Slavic Review, a prominent peer-reviewed journal. The first book subvention prize is given twice a year to three winners for individually authored books.
Woodard’s research has benefited from the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fellowship and Fulbright research grants in Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as support from the Social Science Research Council. In 2022, she received the Title VIII Research Scholar fellowship at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., for her work on migration, race, and belonging in Russia’s Far East. Additionally, she earned the International Relations Teaching Award for the 2022-23 academic year, recognizing her teaching contributions to the international relations undergraduate program.
Woodard also serves as a senior research associate in the Center for European Studies and instructs courses on political anthropology, Eastern Europe, anthropological theory, and global encounters.
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