Greetings to all members of the IAUNRC community,
As the 2025-26 academic year draws to a close, the IAUNRC bids farewell and all future success in retirement to Kasia Rydel-Johnston whose almost 25-year term as Assistant Director witnessed consistent grant-receiving successes and numerous programmatic expansions. Likewise, staff assistant Stu McLaughlin moves splendidly on to new career paths in international education. Both of them have been pillars in planning and implementing the many informative events held by the Center during 2025-26.
The IAUNRC’s signature lecture and exhibition series during 2025-26 was “Security across Central Eurasia in the 21st Century.” Lectures, in person and via zoom, examined deterrence by Baltic states, the security implications of war on Central and Eastern Europe, social media and free speech in Central Europe, food security in Mongolia, Aramaic language preservation and education among Assyrians coupled with an exhibition of school textbooks from homelands and diasporas, budgetary reform and fiscal policies in Uzbekistan, and U.S. economic cooperation toward stability in the region. Several other lectures and performances were cosponsored by the IAUNRC on topics as diverse as elections in Hungary, Persian carpets, and Estonian music. Of the nearly 60 events that composed the Center’s catalogue this year, 35 IAUNRC video conferences and in person outreach sessions provided knowledge on the peoples and societies of the region to college and K-12 teachers and students.
Visiting Scholar Dr. CHEN Su, Lecturer in Iranian and Silk Road History at Inner Mongolia University, spent the year at the IAUNRC with funding from the China Scholarship Council and the Tang Research Foundation. Among her research and public activities at the IAUNRC, she presented a lecture on the impact of Sasanian female imagery along the Silk Road.
As the IAUNRC looks to the 2026-27 academic year, please join us then for events broadly covering the theme of “From Tribal Societies to Empires and Neo-Empires.”
May you have a productive and successful summer!
-Jamsheed