Jean Farneth Boone
 

Jean Farneth Boone is a scholar whose work, in both academic and policy-oriented settings, has focused on the political economy of reform in the post-communist region.    An adjunct professor since 2005 in Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CERES), Dr. Boone currently teaches a graduate-level course on economic issues in Russia and Eurasia.  Over the last 20 years, she has contributed to a wide range of research on economic reform in the region.  

As Senior Research Assistant in Soviet Economics at the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Dr. Boone supported early congressional initiatives to support political and economic change in Poland and to support the first elected parliaments throughout Eastern Europe as they created the legislative groundwork for economic transformation.  She helped coordinate a CRS interparliamentary seminar in Budapest in the early transition and co-wrote, with Dr. John P. Hardt, its report on “The Parliament’s Responsibility for Economic Reform.”  She also served as rapporteur for two Atlantic Council study groups, producing reports which evaluated the obstacles to political and economic reform in Eastern Europe and made recommendations for U.S. policy response.  Later, as a grant review specialist at the Eurasia Foundation, Dr. Boone helped allocate funding for grass roots reform efforts in Russia and the former republics.

Dr. Boone holds a Masters degree in Russian and East European Studies from George Washington University and a PhD in Comparative Politics from Georgetown.  A recipient of fellowships from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Institute for the Study of World Policy, and the Social Science Research Council, she is currently a member of Women in International Security and resides in the Washington, DC area.