Dr. Melanie H. Ram studied French and Italian in high school and got her first international experience in 11th grade when she spent a summer living in Italy. Then, a Russian history class in high school really got her interested in international politics.

Ram, a political science professor at Fresno State since 2006, would later add Russian to her language repertoire and go on to study international relations with a minor in Russian area studies as an undergraduate in college. She focused on central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, in graduate school and as she worked on her doctoral degree.

“The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Wars began in the Balkans the same year as countries declared independence from the former Yugoslavia. Across Central and Eastern Europe, countries were trying to transition to a market economy and democracy,” Ram said. “It was an interesting time to observe this region, to have all these new research questions and opportunities to study in these countries.”

Since then, Ram has focused her work on the influence of international organizations, like the European Union, on domestic politics in Central and Eastern Europe and the influence of domestic actors on international policymaking.

As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar grantee in 2022, Ram researched the subregional intergovernmental organizations that emerged in Europe since the end of the Cold War, many of which were established to support European integration, security and stability. In December, she was invited to share her research at the 2024 Conference on Security Challenges for Europe hosted by the RACVIAC Centre for Security Cooperation in Zagreb, Croatia.

Ram was one of only two American presenters at the conference, the other being the U.S. Ambassador to Croatia.

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