August 23, 2007
Dear Colleagues:
On behalf of the Sakharov Program on Human Rights, I am pleased to
announce the arrival of Elena Skryakova and Oxana Zamolodskaya, the fall
2007 recipients of the Sakharov Fellowship, now in its fourth semester.
*ELENA SKRYAKOVA* graduated with honors in 1999 from Perm Pedagogical
University with a degree in history. Her subsequent work has focused on
political prisoners and on the dissent subculture of 1965-1972. Since
1996, Elena has been actively involved in the work of human rights
institutions such as the Perm-36 Memorial Museum Research Group and the
Center for the Support of Democratic Youth Initiatives (Youth Memorial)
in Perm. At the latter organization, she served as Executive Director
from 2001 to 2004. In 2002 the Heinrich Böll Foundation awarded her a
Young Researchers scholarship to study the emergence of public opinion
and the origins of youth dissent, 1953-1964. She now serves in a dual
capacity at the International Memorial Society, coordinating the
Strategic Planning Group and managing the Analytical and Monitoring
Group. She also serves as president of the Perm Assembly Foundation and
contributes her expertise to the Perm Civil Chamber's "Future of Human
Rights in Russia" project. Elena was recently elected to the
International Memorial Society Board.
Elena's major publications focus on the history of dissent and dissident
subculture, and on the future of human rights in Russia. At Harvard,
Elena is continuing this research, with a particular emphasis on the
issue of generational continuity between the "old" human rights
movement, with its roots in past dissent, and the "new" human rights
movement in today's Russia. Elena hopes that several months' work in
the Sakharov Archive and in the Harvard libraries will allow her to
develop a special course on past and present trends in the human rights
movement in Russia. This course will serve as the basis for public
debate in 18 regions of Russian under the auspices of the International
Memorial Society in 2008-2009. While in the US, Elena also plans to
familiarize herself with American NGOs in order to analyze practical
aspects of human rights activism on a comparative basis.
*OXANA ZAMOLODSKAYA *graduated in 1999 from the Siberian State Academy
of Geodesy in Novosibirsk. She has also completed coursework on
computers in education at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts
and at the Information Technology School of the Russian State Humanities
University (RGGU). She is currently enrolled in a master's program in
social philosophy at RGGU.
From 1999 to 2001, Oxana was director of accessibility at the Siberian
Institute of International Relations, where she led a seminar on human
rights in the modern world. She developed an interest in education for
students with disabilities, and she now teaches information technology
at the Center for Educational Technology's School of Distance Learning
for Students with Disabilities in Moscow. Her publications appear in
pedagogical journals and journals on computer-based learning.
Oxana's research at Harvard involves the comparative analysis of the
legal rights of disabled children, in particular, their right to higher
education in the US and Russia. Her work focuses on US equal-access
legislation and the role of NGOs in advocacy for the disabled. She plans
to develop recommendations for the legal and socio-cultural improvement
of education for children with disabilities in Russian schools, to be
presented to elementary and secondary schools that are not yet prepared
to work with disabled children.
Please join me in extending to Elena and Oxana very warm welcome and
best wishes for a productive and enjoyable semester.
Tatiana Yankelevich, Director
Sakharov Program on Human Rights
