Social Science Research Council

Program Coordinator, IDRF Program

ransom@ssrc.org

Elsa Ransom joined the SSRC in June 2007 as the program coordinator for the IDRF program.  She received her B.A. in political science and Russian studies from UCLA and her M.A. in Russian and Central Asian studies from Harvard.  She has lived in St. Petersburg, Russia as an English teacher and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, first as an intern for the U.S. Embassy and then again as a graduate student conducting research on water resource management in Central Asia.  Prior to joining the SSRC, Elsa worked at the Open Society Institute on a fellowship program that brought students from the former Soviet Union to the United States for graduate studies, and then with international students at the French Culinary Institute in pursuit of a misguided fantasy of opening a bakery/café.