Oliver Wolyniec

Oliver Wolyniec is an M.A. candidate in European and Russian Studies at Yale University. He earned his B.A. in International Relations and Russian from Carleton College in 2019. During his junior year, Oliver studied abroad at Moscow State University and in St. Petersburg and the Baikal region. After graduation, he participated in the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program in Nizhny Novgorod before joining the Peace Corps in Montenegro. From 2021 to 2023, Oliver worked at Eurasia Foundation (EF) in Washington, DC, primarily contributing to EF’s U.S.-Russia Social Expertise Exchange Program. Before coming to Yale, he spent summer 2023 studying Russian at KazNU in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Oliver’s research interests center on the role of civil society in conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts in East/Southeast Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.