By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

Two centers name interim directors for the 2023-24 academic year, and the institute appoints a new faculty director for the International Education Office.

UCLA International Institute, July 10, 2023 —The International Institute is pleased to announce new additions to its leadership at the start of the 2023–24 academic year.

Professor of Political Science Daniel Treisman has become interim director of the Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS), effective July 1, and will serve in the post through June 30, 2024. Treisman takes the reins from Professor Laurie K. Hart, who will be on leave from UCLA and CERS for the year.

The political scientist, who previously led CERS as interim director in 2013, is the author of six books and numerous articles on Russian politics, economics and comparative political economy. Treisman’s research focuses on such topics as democratization, modernization, the politics of authoritarian states, political decentralization and corruption.

The UCLA professor’s latest book, co-authored with Sergei Guriev, “Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century” (Princeton, 2022), has been translated into 13 languages and has received numerous accolades. It was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker and Foreign Affairs; one of the Best Political Books of 2022 by The Financial Times; and among the Books That Made Us Think in 2022 by The Atlantic and Moment.

A Carnegie Fellow in the 2022–23 academic year, the political scientist is a former Guggenheim Fellow and has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, as well as at the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna).

A former interim lead editor of the American Political Science Review, Treisman has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 2009. Since 2014, he has directed the Russia Political Insight Project, which investigates political decision-making in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Christopher P. Hanscom, professor of Korean literature and film in the department of Asian languages and cultures, joined the Institute as the new faculty director of the UCLA International Education Office (IEO) on July 1. Hanscom takes over from Robin Derby, Dr. E. Bradford Burns Professor in Latin American Studies and vice chair for graduate affairs in the history department, who stepped down after serving in the position for several years. Derby also previously chaired the Institute’s Program on Caribbean Studies and served as its equity advisor.

The International Institute thanks Professor Derby for her dedicated leadership of IEO and creative collaborative work with faculty, staff and students to build its strength to promote and manage study abroad and student exchange programming.

Hanscom’s research focuses on the intersection of politics and narrative in literary history. He is the author of “The Real Modern” (Harvard Asia Center, 2013), a study of theories of language and modernist fiction in 1930s colonial Korea; co-editor of “The Affect of Difference” (University of Hawai’i, 2016), a collection of essays offering a new perspective on the history of race and racial ideologies in modern East Asia; co-editor of “Imperatives of Culture” (University of Hawai’i, 2013), a collection of translations of major literary critical and historical essays from the Korean colonial period; and most recently, author of “Impossible Speech” (forthcoming 2024), a study of the politics of representation in contemporary Korean literature and film.

He has served on the Academic Senate Committee on International Education, and currently sits on the faculty administrative committee of the East Asian Studies M.A. program and on the Asia Pacific Center faculty advisory committee, both at the International Institute. In his new role, Hanscom will partner with the Division of Undergraduate Education, the UC Education Abroad Program (UCEAP), the Academic Senate Committee on International Education and departments and faculty across campus on matters related to international education in general and study abroad in particular.

Finally, Professor of Anthropology Yunxiang Yan will become interim director of the Center for Chinese Studies for fall and winter quarters of the coming 2023–24 academic year. The anthropologist previously served as center director for 14 years, 2005–2019, and led the inaugural travel study program in Shanghai for the global studies program of the International Institute.

Yan is well-known for his ethnographic work on the Chinese peasantry and the changing social mores and economic realities of modern China. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has been a visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

The anthropologist is the author of four books, as well as countless journal articles and book chapters. His published books include the edited volume, “Chinese Families Upside Down: Intergenerational Dynamics and Neo-Familism in the Early 21st Century” (Brill, 2021), and three monographs: “The Individualization of Chinese Society” (Berg, 2009); “Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999” (Stanford, 2003), for which he received the Joseph Levenson Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies; and “The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village” (Stanford, 1996).

Professor Michael Berry will be on sabbatical throughout the year, but will return to direct the center in spring quarter 2024.

The Institute looks forward to working with all the faculty joining its leadership ranks in the coming academic year.

Published: Monday, July 10, 2023