Michele Commercio is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont.  She has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.Sc. in compoarative politics from the London School of Economics, an M.A. in Soviet and East European Affairs from the University of Connecticut, and a B.A. from Boston College.  Commercio specializes in ethnic relations in the post-Soviet Central Asian and Baltic states, and how particular institutional arrangements impact those relations.  Funded by various organizations including the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER), her work appears in Nationalities Papers, Problems of Post-Communism, and Studies in Comparative International Development (forthcoming).