AISEES is governed by a Board of Trustees who are volunteers with varied experiences in southeastern Europe.
Lauren Earl 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.
Cynthia Lintz received her PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A certified planner (AICP), she first came to Southeast Europe in 1998 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bulgaria. She returned after the North Macedonian insurgency in 2002 to conduct research on governance for her Master’s Degree and worked for the Community Self-Help Initiative, a Louis Berger /USAID funded program. Cynthia’s doctoral research on identity along the Bulgaria-North Macedonian border won “Outstanding Dissertation for 2015”. She has been participating and working with student exchange programs since 2011.
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.
Mary Neuburger (Member of the Scholarship and Fellowship Committee) is a Professor of history, the Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES), and the Chair of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas of Austin. In this role Dr. Neuburger has initiated numerous synergistic projects with departments and global area studies centers across UT campus. She has also secured and administered numerous federal grants including the Department of Education, Title VI National Resource Center grant (2014-2022), 3 Fulbright-Hayes Group Projects Abroad grants (2013-16, 2014, 2018), and a Department of Defense grant for Project Global Officers (2013-15). In terms of research, Dr. Neuburger is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Cornell 2004), Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Cornell, 2012), and Ingredients of Change: The History and Culture of Food in Bulgaria (Cornell, 2022). Dr. Neuburger is also the co-editor with Paulina Bren of Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (Oxford, 2012) and has authored numerous articles on Bulgarian and Cold War history. She is also co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary History.
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 Director of the Visual Resources Center of 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.
Trustee Emeritus
Richard Record has worked in various capacities since 1976 with non-profit and U.S. government institutions to design, develop, and promote programs and projects that support and encourage social, cultural and scientific exchanges between the peoples of Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. He recently retired and is living life the way it should be in Maine.
Please read more about the goals of AISEES in our Mission Statement.