Martha L. Merritt
-
Profile
As a scholar of Russian politics who has lived and taught in five countries, Martha Merritt seeks to facilitate sustained cross-cultural community for the University of Richmond. She works with faculty, staff and students to deepen and extend UR’s strong web of partnerships abroad, with particular focus on South Africa, Costa Rica, the Nordic countries, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Since joining the UR community in 2015, Merritt founded the EnCompass program to provide international experience for non-traditional students. She also extended International Education Week to a campus-wide focus on another culture. The Institute for International Education recognized EnCompass with a Heiskell Award for increasing access to study abroad, and the AIEA presented its Innovation Award to UR for the revised IE Week, both in 2022. Nearly 70% of UR undergraduates have international experience before graduation.
Merritt worked at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame before coming to Richmond. She established programs, internships and long-term partnerships abroad, as well as overseeing Chicago’s Center in Paris. Her goals for international education include integrating local and global learning on challenges such as sustainability, facilitating meaningful engagement with other cultures, and empowering international students as vital community members.
-
Publications
Journal Articles
Archie Brown: The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age. (London: Bodley Head and New York: Basic Books, 2014. Pp. x, 466.) in The Review of Politics 03/2015; 77(02):332-334.
With Maureen Miller and Laura Montgomery, “European Schools in America, American Schools in Europe: Outposts along the Path to Global Diversity” in IIE Networker, Spring 2010, pp. 32-34
With David Comp, “Qualitative Standards and Learning Outcomes for Study Abroad” in William W. Hoffa and Stephen C. DePaul, co-editors, A History of U.S. Study Abroad: 1965-Present (Frontiers, 2010), pp. 451-489
“Eduard Shevardnadze and the Politics of Sheer Tenacity,” Chicago Tribune, November 28, 2003
“A Geopolitics of Identity: Drawing the Line Between Russia and Estonia,” Nationalities Papers 28:2 (June 2000), pp. 243-262
“Getting Out the Vote, Russian-Style: IKEA vs. Putin,” Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2000
“Otvetstvennost’ i Rossiiskaia politika: kak ob stenku gorokh?” [Accountability and Russian politics: hitting the wall?] Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta: sotsiologiia i politologiia [Moscow University Journal: sociology and politics] 2 (April-June 1998), pp. 49-58
Book Chapters“Gorbachev and the Soviet Collapse: Stirrings of Political Accountability?” in William Whisenhunt and Steven Usitalo, eds., Russian and Soviet History: Russia from the Time of Troubles to thevCollapse of the Soviet Union (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), pp. 265-278
“Conflict Resolution: Its Roots and Offshoots in the West” in History of Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in the West, Russia, and Central Asia [in English and Tajik] (Ministry of Education, Tajikistan, and the Kettering Foundation, 2006)
“Fragments of Empire and Baltic Integration: Lessons for Building Tolerance” in Sabina Crisen, ed., Minorities and Tolerance (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2001), pp. 54-60
“Forgiveness, Despite the Pressures of Sovereignty and Nationalism” in Jean Bethke Elshtain, with contributions by Fred Dallmayr, Martha Merritt, and Raimo Väyrynen, Old Wine and New Bottles:International Politics and Ethical Discourse (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), pp. 72-81
Essays“Notes from the Field Experience: pioneering peace students return to Notre Dame,” Peace Colloquy, The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Spring 2006, pp. 4-6