Board of Trustees

AISEES is governed by a Board of Trustees who are volunteers with varied experiences in southeastern Europe.

Jelena Bogdanović (Vanderbilt University) studies cross-cultural and religious themes in the architecture of the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Her authored and edited books include The Framing of Sacred Space: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church (Oxford UP, 2017), Type and Archetype in Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Architecture (Brill, 2023, with Ida Sinkević, Marina Mihaljević, and Čedomila Marinković) Icons of Space: Advances in Hierotopy (Routledge, 2021, 2023, open access 2024), Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium (Routledge, 2018, 2020), Space of the Icon: Iconography and Hierotopy (Theoria, 2019, with Michele Bacci and Vladimir Sedov), Political Landscapes of Capital Cities (UP of Colorado, 2016, with Jessica Christie and Eulogio Guzmán), and On the Very Edge: Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–1941) (Leuven and Cornell UP, 2014, with Lilien Robinson and Igor Marjanović). She is the editor of the section on women in architecture in Eastern Europe of the Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture 1960-2020 general editors Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns (Bloomsbury 2025, 2026).

Lauren Earl (The Disney Corporation) graduated from the University of Maryland with a BA in Anthropology, focusing on ancient history and archaeology. She participated in several seasons of field work in Romania which sparked her passion and interest in the region. Following graduation she turned to non-profit management, where she has helped develop and drive multi-million dollar fundraising strategies for various organizations.

Robert (Rob) Garris is the Executive Director of the Trinity Leadership Fellows program and Managing Director of the Leadership Development initiative on the philanthropies team at Trinity Church Wall Street.  Rob has built innovative international education and research programs at universities and foundations for more than twenty years, working for Schwarzman Scholars (a new leadership development program in China), the Rockefeller Foundation, Columbia University, and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  Rob received his Ph.D. in European History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he specialized in immigration and urban policy.
 
Zsuzsánna Magdó is Associate Director at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies where she manages regional studies programs to support interdisciplinary scholarship and public education on the world regions of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Eurasia. A native of Transylvania, she received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. 
 

Ioana Muresan  is a researcher for the “Gavrilă Simion” Eco-Museum Research Institute in Tulcea, Romania, in the Danube Delta. She is an archaeologist studying the development of Roman life in the Danubian provinces and has been actively interested in the history and traditions of the South-Eastern European countries, in both ancient and modern times.

Victor Plamenov Petrov (Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees: Chair of the Scholarship and Fellowship Committee) is an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He works on the global Cold War, modern Balkan history, the history of technology and its intersection with politics and societies.

Lynn Roller (Treasurer of the Board of Trustees) is Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of California, Davis. She is an archaeologist with fieldwork experience in Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria, and is currently the Co-Director of the survey project at Gluhite Kamani in southeastern Bulgaria. Lynn has close connections with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and the American Research Institute in Turkey, and has actively promoted AISEES membership in the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC).

Daniel Weiss (Chair of the Board of Trustees; Member of the Scholarship and Fellowship Committee) holds a Ph.D in Classical Archaeology from the University of Virginia, where he serves as Senior Instructional Technology Specialist for the Art Department. He has excavated in Morgantina, Sicily and at the Roman fort of Porolissum in Salǎj, Romania. His primary research interests are geography and the Roman/Barbarian interaction along the frontier, focusing on sites in Romania and Bulgaria. He has presented his research in the United States, Germany, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania – part of which has been published in BAR-IS 2236 The Roman Empire and Beyond: Archaeological and Historical Research on the Romans and Native Cultures in Central Europe. He has also provided illustrations for numerous scholarly publications and children’s picture books. Additional research involves issues of classical reception, folklore tradition, and post-colonial identity in the Carpathian region as expressed through contemporary music.

Former Trustees

Cynthia Lintz (AISEES Trustee 2016-2024)

Mary Neuburger (AISEES Trustee 2016-2025)

Richard Record  (AISEES Trustee 2016-2020) 

Please read more about the goals of AISEES in our Mission Statement.