Susanne Wengle

Biography

I am an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Before joining Notre Dame, I earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkely and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago.

My research examines Russia’s post-Soviet political and economic transformation and engages with questions how we study market creation in this context and beyond. My book Post-Soviet Power: State-led Development and Russia’s Marketization (2015, Cambridge University Press) examined the political economy of newly created electricity markets in Russia, suggesting that the Russian government is actively involved in shaping market institutions. The book was awarded honorable mention in the 2016 Ed. Hewett Book Prize for an outstanding monograph in political economy, by the Association for Study of Eastern Europe, Eurasian and Slavic Studies (ASEEES). My second book, Black Earth, White Bread; a technopolitical history of Russian Agriculture and Food (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), documents how politics, rural production and quotidian practices evolved in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.

I have published articles in Governance, Governance and Regulation, Economy and Society, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Economics, Slavic Review, Europe-Asia Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Laboratorium, and the Journal of Peasant Studies. I am also the editor of a new textbook on Russian politics, Russian Politics Today: Stability and Fragility (Cambridge University Press, 2022; second edition forthcoming).

My projects have been supported through research funding from Notre Dame and various external funding sources, including the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European Commission/Marie-Curie Actions, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, and the Östersjöstiftelsen.

Since 2022, I have been an active participant in the debates on the effects of Russia’s war on Ukrainian agriculture and the Russian economy, with media and policy-relevant contributions.