John C. Stanko
Emerging Scholar of International Relations in Eurasia
I am a doctoral candidate in political science specializing in international relations (IR) with additional expertise in the comparative politics of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian region. I have long been drawn to learning about empires and how large polities engage(d) in diplomacy with one another, and understanding how governments utilize non-military capabilities to achieve foreign policy goals fascinates me. Having also developed an interest in educational systems from my time as a home schooled student, I have spent time teaching both in the United States and in Russia. Not surprisingly, as a result, my primary research themes now revolve around non-coercive inter-state influence, with a special focus on the intersection of higher education and IR. Given this interest, foreign policy analysis plays an important part in my research.
Geographically, I focus most of my attention on central Eurasia, with my strongest interests being Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. As such, I have completed at least a second-year course in Russian, Chinese, and Kazakh in order to conduct work with local-language primary source materials. My dissertation investigates the ways in which decision-makers in structurally disadvantaged (primarily authoritarian) states respond to domestic and international constraints in order to achieve foreign policy goals.
My current research projects include a comparative cross-country study of diplomatic academies as soft power resources, an analysis of national hockey team roster construction using international relations theory, and a collaborative paper with a Kazakhstani scholar on links between foreign policy doctrine and higher education internationalization policy in Kazakhstan.
Approach To Research
From an ontological standpoint, I consider myself analytically eclectic. I find useful insights in each of the three major research traditions in International Relations, and I see no reason to place bounds upon my potential avenues of inquiry by limiting myself to a single approach. Like the platypus pictured here, the most impressive entities, whether in the natural world or the social scientific community, are those which synthesize traits/insights from seemingly incompatible sources into a coherent whole.
While recognizing that every researcher has biases that thon* must confront, I am of the opinion that we can find ways to overcome our innate predilections in order to understand the social world. Epistemology-wise, at the most fundamental level I consider there to be an objective reality we are observing and analyzing. I fall somewhere between positivism and scientific realism, though; I am interested in making predictions when possible about the aforementioned reality “out there,” but my foremost aim is to advance an understanding of political dynamics.
Methodologically, I am primarily a qualitative researcher, but I often pursue mixed methods work. My methodological toolkit includes training in network analysis, geographic information systems, content analysis, game theoretical models, and regression analysis using R and Stata.
Non-Academic Interests
When not exploring the fascinating subject of how polities interact with one another, I keep myself occupied dabbling in almost every hobby under the sun. Anything creative appeals to me, whether that’s forging a knife (pictured at right), painting landscapes, or programming in JavaScript. Letting my mind roam free also gives me space to reset so I can let project ideas gestate.
I also enjoy traveling, when conditions permit. I was living and working in Moscow when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and I would love to have the opportunity to live abroad again in the future. For shorter-term travel, I would like to continue my tour of Central Asia, with Samarkand and Bukhara next on the list of places to see. I was in the process of planning a trip to Harbin, China in 2020 before the pandemic derailed that idea, but I would like to make it there sometime to see the Harbin Ice Festival. Returning to Lake Baikal and/or visiting its so-called sister lake, Lake Tanganyika in Zambia, are also on my to-do list. Domestically, I’m hoping to tour the Pacific Northwest in the near future.
