Lauren Woodard

• 2025 Fall
  • ANT 185 Global Encounters:Comparing World Views & Values Cross-Culturally
  • ANT/LIN 672 Language, Culture, and Society
• 2025 Spring
  • ANT 400/600 Selected Topics - People, Power, Politics
  • ANT 428/629 Transformation of Eastern Europe
• 2024 Fall
  • ANT 311 Anthropological Theory
  • ANT 185 Global Encounters:Comparing World Views & Values Cross-Culturally
• 2024 Spring
  • ANT 300 Selected Topics - Migration, Borders, Belonging
  • ANT 428/629 Transformation of Eastern Europe

Lauren Woodard is a political anthropologist and critical migration studies scholar. She takes migration as a starting point for analyzing citizenship, race, and language in Russia, the Republic of Georgia and South Korea.

Based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork, her first book, Ambiguous Inclusion: Migration and Race on the Russia-China Border (University of Toronto Press 2026), explores how Russian citizenship policies shape belonging, race and identity for migrants along Russia's borders with China and North Korea. She has also published three articles related to this project.

Her new project extends her interests in mobility and the afterlives of Soviet and Russian imperialism as she examines the impact of Russia's war in Ukraine on migration within the region. This includes ethnographic fieldwork on language practices and ideologies in Tbilisi, Georgia and migration from Central Asia to South Korea. In both projects, she examines how language, ethnicity and post-Soviet identities reemerge in new ways, driven by the war.

Her research has been supported by Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren and Fulbright research grants to Russia and Kazakhstan and writing fellowships at the Kennan Institute and Yale University. She has published in Cultural Anthropology, REGION, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review and has an article forthcoming in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Prior to joining Syracuse University, she was a postdoctoral associate in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies and a lecturer in anthropology at Yale University. Woodard earned a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019.

"Migration, Race, and Belonging in Russia’s Far East", Sponsored by Kennan Institute, Title VIII Research Scholar.

Sponsored by Kennan Institute, Title VIII Summer Research Scholar.

"The Politics of Return: Resettlement, Development, and Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Russia", Sponsored by Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Sponsored by Fulbright.

Sponsored by Social Science Research Council.

• Journal Articles
  • Woodard, L. A., ""As if I Were an Illegal’: Racial Passing in Immigrant Russia." Cultural Anthropology, 2022.
  • Woodard, L. A., ""Yeast for the Russian Land’: the Return of Primorskii krai’s Old Believers." REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, 2020.
  • Woodard, L. A., "From Prikaz to Procedures: Becoming an International Organization in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2018.
• Book Review
  • Woodard, L. A., "Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene Avrutin." In Canadian Slavonic Papers. , 2023.

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA), "Lessons from Migrant Russia: Navigating Legal Ambiguity, Informality, and Precarity under Authoritarianism" (November, 2025)

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Society for the Anthropology of Europe, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (November, 2025)

The Central Asia and Caucasus Initiative, "The Violence of Inclusion: The Shifting Stakes of Compatriotism for Immigrants to Russia" (October 31, 2025)

Citizenship and (Im)mobility Beyond the Global North, University of Amsterdam, "Spatializing Citizenship on the Russia-China Border" (April, 2025)

Citizenship and (Im)mobility Beyond the Global North, University of Amsterdam, "State Violence" (April, 2025)

The Eastern Europe and Transatlantic Network, "Ideological Migrants to Russia: How Disillusionment and the Transnational Right Motivate Migration to Russia" (March 14, 2025)

Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, "“A Common Language, a Common Culture?" Producing Similarity, Difference, and Whiteness in Russia" (March 12, 2025)

American Anthropological Association annual meeting, "Recalling Soviet Internationalism for Migrant Justice in the Global East" (November 20, 2024)

Yale Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses, ""Ideological Migrants" to Russia: Examining How Disillusionment Motivates Migration" (April 23, 2024)

Migrants and Exiles: The New Mobility Reshaping Central Asia and Russia, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University, "The Violence of Inclusion: The Shifting Stakes of Russian Compatriotism" (April 4, 2024)

Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, "Ambiguous Inclusion: Transforming Migrants into Compatriots on Russia's Border with China" (March 27, 2024)

Annual Convention, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, "Europe, Coloniality, and Colonialism: an Anthropological Perspective" (November 30, 2023 - December 3, 2023)

Annual Convention, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), "Ukrainian Refugees, Filtration Camps, and Forced Migration on the Russia-China Border" (November 30, 2023 - December 3, 2023)

Kennan Institute, "Ambiguous Inclusion: Transforming Migrants into Compatriots on Russia’s Border with China" (June 8, 2023)

American Anthropological Association annual meeting, "Towards an Anthropology of Public Service: Transforming Migrants into Compatriots in Russia’s Far East" (November, 2022)

New York Conference on Asian Studies, Syracuse University, "Ukrainian Refugees, Filtration Camps, and Forced Migration on the Russia-China Border" (October, 2022)

Smith College, "A Common Language, a Common Culture? Producing Similarity, Difference, and Race in Migrant Russia" (March 23, 2022)

Yale University, "A Common Language, a Common Culture? Producing Similarity, Difference, and Migrant Categories in Russia" (February 24, 2022)

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Russian Politics in the Late Putin Era, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, "A Common Language, a Common Culture: Whiteness in Productions of Russian Compatriotism" (December, 2021)

Global Vantage Point Lecture Series, Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College, "Like Yeast for the Russian Land: Climate Migration and Race along Russia’s Border with China" (November 2, 2021)

Aleksanteri Institute’s Conference on Eurasia and Global Migration, "Promoting Similarity and Constructing Compatriots in Russia’s Far East" (October, 2021)

Race in Focus Series, University of Pittsburgh and ASEEES, "Talking about Whiteness: Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia" (February 19, 2021)

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, "Russian Politics in the Late Putin Era" (2021)

First Book Subvention, Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) (2025)

International Relations Teaching Award, Department of International Relations (May, 2023)