Allison Evans, associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, has received the 2026 Ed A. Hewett Book Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies for her monograph, Protest in the Provinces: Coming to Terms with Capitalism in Russia’s Company Towns (Oxford University Press, 2025).
In her award-winning book, Dr. Evans compares protests in three cities with different economic bases — steel in Cherepovets, defense in Komsomolsk-na-Amure, and oil and gas in Surgut — during the 1990s. She offers important insights into how the challenges faced by these strategically important towns during the post-communist transition set the stage for different forms of contentious politics depending on the relationship between local industry and the central government.
Dr. Evans first joined the University of Nevada, Reno faculty in 2018 as an assistant professor. She currently teaches courses on comparative politics, comparative political movements, U.S.–Russian relations, U.S. foreign policy, and international law. Earlier in her career, she was an assistant professor of political science at Western New Mexico University.
Dr. Evans is a graduate of San Diego State University, where she majored in political science and Russian. She holds a master’s degree in political science from California State University, Long Beach and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.