Mark von Hagen teaches the history of Eastern Europe and Russia, with a focus on Ukrainian-Russian relations, at Arizona State University, after teaching 24 years at Columbia University, where he also chaired the history department and directed the Harriman Institute.  At the Harriman Institute, he developed Ukrainian studies in the humanities and social sciences.  He was elected President of the International Association for Ukrainian Studies in 2002 and presided over the Congress in Donetsk in 2005.  He also served as President of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (2009).  During his New York years, he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and remains a member of the Advisory Board for Europe and Asia at Human Rights Watch.  He has worked with historians, archivists, and educators in independent Ukraine and with diaspora institutions.  He has served on the advisory board of the European University in Minsk (in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania), to the Open Society Institute; on the Board of Directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the International Fellowship Committee of the Social Science Research Council.
 

Ambassador Vlad Lupan has been the Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the United Nations, in New York, since January 2012, where he is focusing on development issues, rule of law and human rights, and conflict resolution. He has held a variety of diplomatic posts since 1996 till 2008, last one being Head of Political-Military Cooperation Department and was a negotiator on Transnistrian conflict settlement. He also worked with OSCE field Missions in in Georgia, Albania and Croatia. In 2008 Mr. Lupan joined the civil society, and became a member of the advisory board to the Ministry of Defense. During this time he was also the host of the “Euro-Atlantic Dictionary” radio talk show. In 2010 he became the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Acting President of the Republic of Moldova, and was later elected as a Member of the Parliament. 

Educated at the State University of Moldova and at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania, Ambassador Lupan earned his international relations degree, and later a master’s degree in journalism and public communications from the Free Independent Moldovan University in Chisinau.  Ambassador Lupan has published mainly in Romanian, though he also published in Russian or English, on foreign and domestic politics issues, including international security matters, Security Sector Reform, Transnistrian conflict settlement and European Union Eastern Partnership.
 

Mark Hallerberg is Professor of Public Management and Political Economy at the Hertie School of Governance and is Director of Hertie's Fiscal Governance Centre.  He is also a  non-resident fellow at Brussel's think tank Bruegel.

He is the author of one book, co-author of a second, and co-editor of a third. He has published over twenty-five articles and book chapters on fiscal governance, tax competition, and exchange rate choice.

Hallerberg has held professorships previously at Emory University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has done consulting work for the Dutch and German Ministries of Finance, Ernst and Young Poland, the European Central Bank, the German Development Corporation (GIZ), the Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.