Dr. Michael Hemesath and Dr. Diane Nemec Ignashev

Michael Hemesath received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, after completing his undergraduate degree at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN. Though the break-up of the Soviet Union quickly rendered his dissertation on the trade patterns of the Soviet Union a rather minor historical topic, the changes have provide him plenty of new issues to be explored.

Michael teaches international topics at Carleton College, including international trade and the economics of the former Soviet Union. He also has taught health economics, intermediate macroeconomics and industrial organization. He has taught economics three times at Kuban State University in Krasnodar, Russia as part of the ACM Russia Program. He has also taught economics in the Masters degree program at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine.

His research interests include transition economics of the former Soviet Union. His publications include work on attitudes toward markets in the former Soviet Union, game theoretic comparisons of American and Russian students and the changing education system in the former Soviet Union. He has also participated in a National Academy of Science program exploring worker health and environmental conditions in Donetsk, Ukraine.

Michael has participated in a variety of interdisciplinary seminars at Carleton, including a seminar examining the boundaries between Europe and Asia. Michael also teaches in the Cross-Cultural Studies program at Carleton. He looks forward to exploring disciplinary and cultural perspectives with the participants of the GPP Russian seminar.

Diane Nemec Ignashev is Professor of Russian and Chair of the Department of German and Russian at Carleton College, where she has taught since 1981. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago; her dissertation was entitled "Song and Confession in the Short Prose of Vasilii Makarovich Shukshin." She has also studied at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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