Biography

Dr. Urban is the author of Moscow and the Italian Communist Party (winner of the American Historical Association's Marraro Prize in 1986) and Russia's Communists at the Crossroads (a Choice selection as "Outstanding Academic Book" in 1997). She has also edited/coauthored several collective volumes and published numerous articles and chapters on international communist affairs and post-Soviet Russian politics. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, and other institutions. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has made semi-annual visits to Russia for research and interviews. She is a research associate of George Washington University's Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and has been a visiting scholar in Moscow at the Institute of Scientific Information on the Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her current teaching interests include Russian politics under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, Cold War history, and comparative governments of West and East-Central Europe.