Yuri V. Medvedkov

[Medvedkov's picture]

medvedkov.1@osu.edu

Address

Department of Geography, The Ohio State University
1049A Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, Oh 43210-1361

Current Position(s):

  • Professor of Geography, The Ohio State University (1987-present).

Previous Positions

  • Distinguished Visiting Professor, Geography, University College of London, Great Britain (1989)
  • Distinguished Visiting Professor, Geography, The Ohio State University. 1986-87.

Education:

  • Dr.Sci., Institute of Geography, Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
  • Ph.D., Institute of Geography, Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
  • B.A., Institute of International Relations, Moscow.

Yuri is a human geographer with research and teaching interests in urban and regional geography. His current particular focus is the monitoring of adjustments in geo-demography and urban settlement to the globalization revolution. This includes comparisons across the world regions influenced by the Western cultural tradition, including Russia.

Methodologically, his research employs rigorous hypothesis testing in examining the magnitude and sustainability of changes. Origins for the methodology are in the high risk area analysis that Yuri developed in his research work at the World Health Organization (Ecology Unit Chief, 1968-72). Later, he founded the Human Ecology Laboratory at Moscow's Institute of Geography for re-applying the same approach to Soviet realities, which led to hash experiences and, eventually to his leaving the USSR in 1986.

Yuri's regional studies are frequently undertaken as a team effort: together with Dr. Olga Medvedkov, his wife, who teaches geography at Wittenberg University, Ohio http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/geog/medvedkov.html. One such study, of 1989-1990 and for the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, examined disadvantaged groups and backward regions in the Soviet Union with a prophetic conclusion, one year before its materialization, about a possibility for Russia's leaders leaning to the Soviet Union dissolution.

The range of dissertation projects that Yuri has advised cover such topics as the diffusion of commodity exchanges in post-Soviet Russia, the geography of professional baseball in the USA and the acceptance of super-regional malls across the US metropolitan areas.

Currently, Yuri teaches an intermediate course on urbanization of the world, the regional course on the post-Soviet realm, and a graduate course in population geography. All of the courses bring the elements of geographical data analysis, and the GIS-assisted model building, including the use of the GeoDA and the WebCT/Carmen software. Yuri participates in the activities the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Ohio State University, being for several years a member of its Executive Board and, with presentations at the Center’s workshops during the Fall quarters.

Yuri's recreational interests include surfing on the Internet, constant upgrading of his home computers, gardening and travels with a video camera. He and his wife Olga live (with their Labrador retriever Tommy) in a cedar house on a ex-urban forest lot of Delaware county. 

Recent Research, Publications and Activities

Papers of the 2000s and 1990s:

Moscow in Transition (with Olga Medvedkov). 2005. In Transformation of Cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards Globalization, ed. F.E. Ian Hamilton, Kaliopa Dimitrovska Andrews, and Nataљa Pichler-Milanovic. UN University Press. ISBN: 92-808-1105-3.

Fragmented Russia (with Ioffe, G., O. Medvedkov, T. Nefedova, and N. Vlasova). 2002. In Fragmented space: Federal, regional, and local relations in the Russian Federation, ed. B. Ruble, N. Popson, and J. Koehn, 31-79. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Turning Points and Trends in Russia’s Urbanization. Chapter 10 in "Population Under Duress. The Geodemography of Post-Soviet Russia" 1999, editors: George J. Demko et al., Westview Press, pp. 201-229 (with Olga Medvedkov).

La geographie dans l'etude et la getion du milieu. Viles en paralleles (ISSN 0242-2794), vol. 26/27, December 1998, pp. 119-142

The December 1993 Russian Election: Geographical Patterns and Contextual Factors. The Russian Review, vol. 55 (January 1996), pp. 80-98. (with Olga Medvedkov and George E. Hudson).

Cities of the former Soviet Union. Chapter 4 in "Cities of the World," editors: S. D. Brunn & J. F. Williams. Second Edition, 1993, pp. 151-194. Harper Collins Publishers (with Olga Medvedkov, W. Randy Smith, R. Krischyunas).

Geography in American Universities. Geograf (Moscow), 1993, June, pp. 16-17. (In Russian)
Changes in Russia and the perspectives of new relations with the Pacific Rim neighbors. Perspectives (monthly), No. 1, 1992, pp. 18-23. (In Korean).

Other
Recent papers presented at professional meetings include:

2004. Central and East European Cities and Global Environmental Change: Intersystem Links. 2004. AAG Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA: (with Olga Medvedkov, the IHDP sponsored session).

2003, Identities and Hinter worlds of Russia’s Elite (with Olga Medvedkov), AAG Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.

2002,: Urbanization in  East Central Europe and Russia, an invited position paper presented as a lecture (with Olga Medvedkov); at the panel at the Third International Human Dimensions Workshop: Human Dimensions of Urbanization and the Transition to Sustainability, June 3 – 14,  Bonn, Germany the workshop organized  by the Secretariat of the IHDP,  International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change.

2002: Urban Environment Problems In the Post-Communist Countries of Europe (with Olga Medvedkov), an invited position paper,  51 pp.  December 7-9, 2002, Bonn, Germany:  at the Scientific Planning Committee: the IHDP Scoping Meeting on Urbanization, organized  by the IHDP Secretariat (International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change).

2001:. Moscow’s international transportation links. AAG Meeting, New York

2000:. Moscow as a world city: An assessment of transnationally organized producer services. AAG Meeting, Pittsburgh
The research in 2005 deals with gated communities and upscale housing in Moscow and Moscow province, which goes working as a team with Olga Medvedkov of the Wittenberg University, who repeatedly made, with her students, field observations and filming in Moscow and Moscow province.

The WebCT based courses in 2004-2005 [accessible from https://telr.ohio-state.edu/apps/webctcontrolcenter/index.cfm#status2] are

 

GEOG 512
(geog512au2005medvedkov)

GEOG 597.01
(geog597_01au2005medvedkov)

GEOG 670
(geog670wi2005medvedkov)

GEOG 510
(geog510wi2004medvedkov)

GEOG 650
(geog650au2003medvedkov)