Lecturers at the Jefferson Educational Society

Lena Surzhko Harned, Ph.D., is an associate teaching professor of Political Science. She is also the associate director and a faculty affiliate of the Public Policy Fund at Penn State Behrend. Her primary research interests are in the field of comparative politics.

She is an author of several papers dealing with issues of nationalism and ethnic conflict, identity politics, electoral politics, comparative democratization, and political behavior in the post-communist states of Eastern Europe.

Her co-authored book, Post-Soviet Legacies and Conflicting Values in Europe: Generation WhY, was published in 2017 and examines the intergenerational conflict and consequences in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia.