Jennifer S. Wistrand

Jennifer S. Wistrand is the Deputy Director of the Kennan Institute.  She holds a BA in Anthropology and French from Northwestern University and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis.  Her areas of expertise are migration and forced displacement in the Caucasus and Central Asia and humanitarian and development approaches to managing migration and forced displacement.  

Prior to joining the Kennan Institute Dr. Wistrand was an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.  Prior to that she was a consultant to the World Bank for projects concerning internally displaced persons (IDPs), women, and youth in Azerbaijan, Sudan, and Morocco.  She was a term appointee and a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies’ Fellow in the US Department of State’s Secretary of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.  She also taught at the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.  

Dr. Wistrand had held a number of fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Azerbaijan and a Title VIII Kennan Institute Fellowship.  She was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkmenistan.