Reflecting on the 2025-2026 academic year, I am reminded of the continued importance of our Center’s mission and of the strength of the scholarly community that sustains it. At a time when political challenges in the region continue to evolve, and when international education faces new pressures in our country, the scholarship and teaching supported by CREES remain as important as ever.
As highlighted throughout the report, we had a full year of thought-provoking CREES lectures and co-sponsored events. Our programming reflected the breadth and complexity of our region, with events covering Bosnia, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine as well as transnational perspectives. We were pleased to welcome speakers from a wide range of disciplines and professional backgrounds, including anthropology, history, literature, regional studies, journalism, literature, and art. Their visits created opportunities for students, faculty, and community members to think critically about the region’s past and present. We started off the year welcoming CNN contributor and U-M alumna, Jill Dougherty for a CREES Distinguished Lecture, in which she shared details about her recent book My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin. Another highlight of the year was our annual Borka Tomljenović Lecture, delivered by Dr. Gazela Pudar Draško on the widespread student protests across Serbia. The talk was an inspiration for what direct democracy in hybrid regimes can look like in action. More details from our speaker series and events can be seen throughout this report.
