The Priestless Russian Old Believers ("Pomortsy") are an important ethno-confessional group in Central and Eastern Europe (since the 1660s) and the eastern United States (since the 1880s). In the eastern US, there are four historical centers (Marianna, PA; Erie, PA; Detroit, MI; Millville, NJ) that are home to prayer houses, practicing Old Believers, and the descendants of the original immigrants. They are historically and genealogically connected to the Pomortsy and their descendants in Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The focus of the Holdeman Lab is on the Pomortsy in their westward diaspora outside of Russia.

The Holdeman Lab is virtual in the sense that it does not have a traditional physical laboratory space. Research interns work on their own computers (or a campus computer of their choice) with digital materials provided to them each semester by Dr. Holdeman. It is hoped that as the lab grows, there will be enough participants to be able to gather a few times a semester (over a meal or snacks) to build a sense of community and shared mission and to present to the others what they are working on and the skills that they are developing.

New research interns usually begin by working on the digitization of a wide range of materials in a variety of languages. This teaches standard operating procedures, editing skills, communication skills; tracking hours and progress; and familiarity with the research materials and with the subject group. Students can then choose to work on increasingly complicated materials and analysis. Depending on the tasks, research interns can also develop skills in Optical Character Recognition, accessibility, hypertext annotations, archiving, digitization, image editing, audio editing, text editing for publications, transcription, transliteration, data analysis, and more.

The Holdeman Lab aims to collect, process, organize, and make available materials and information on this important and fascinating religious and ethnic minority in diaspora in the United States and Central and Eastern Europe, so that its members, descendants, and neighbors can learn and understand more about their history, the historico-cultural contexts that motivated their migration and varied fates, and the rich cultural and social tapestry into which they are woven and have contributed to. In the process, research interns acquire and develop analytical, organizational, and presentational skills that will serve them well in their many fields of study and career paths, while at the same time giving back to the communities that they are studying.

The Principal Investigator of the lab is Prof. Jeffrey D. ("Jeff") Holdeman of the Indiana University Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. Dr. Holdeman has been conducting research on the Priestless Russian Old Believers and their descendants since 1998, starting while a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University. He defended his doctoral dissertation ("Language Maintenance and Shift among the Russian Old Believers of Erie, Pennsylvania") in 2002, and he has since expanded his fields of interest and geographic range in Old Believer studies while a faculty member at Indiana University. He has given numerous international conference papers and public talks and published an English translation of Eugeniusz Iwaniec's seminal history (1977) of Old Believers in Poland in 2026 (History of the Russian Old Believers on Polish Lands: 17th–20th Centuries, Slavica Publishers).

Research Assistant membership in the lab requires the completion of a minimum of three credits (of SLAV-X473 Internship in Slavic or SLAV-T271 [Priestless Russian Old Believers in their Westward Diaspora]) or 150 hours of paid Federal Work Study work. Several undergraduate students have aided Dr. Holdeman in his Old Believer research over the years before the foundation of the lab, and these students can use that toward lab membership.

Dr. Holdeman is now seeking more short-term and long-term research assistants. Students interested in exploring the possibilities of affiliation with the research lab should contact him (jeffhold@iu.edu).

Undergraduate students interested in becoming a research assistant in the lab have two main paths:

1) For credit: IU undergraduate students can complete 1–3 credits a semester working on a variety of tasks and projects which align with their skill sets, interests, and experiential goals. This is an excellent way for students to learn the fundamentals of humanities research work, apply their language skills (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Lithuanian, German, etc.), build skills that typical coursework does not offer, work with unique unpublished datasets, get internship credits (an opportunity which is less common in the humanities), and contribute to emerging research. Interested students must contact Dr. Holdeman (jeffhold@iu.edu) prior to the beginning of the semester to arrange authorization to register for SLAV-X471 (Internship in Slavic) by first discussing their interests, skill sets, desired number of credit hours (ranging from 1 to 3 per semester; 1 pass/fail credit equals 50 hours of research work), and personal goals. For SLAV-X471, students complete regular work logs, short and long reflection essays, and skill assessments.

2) For pay: IU students who are eligible for Federal Work Study (https://controller.iu.edu/services/payroll-processors/work-study) can contact Dr. Holdeman (jeffhold@iu.edu) about the possibility of applying for a limited number of FWS-funded research positions each year. These require a greater commitment of time (typically up to 220 hours in the academic year, while still being flexible in terms of schedule and work per week) and sometimes previous experience in the lab.

For more information about the lab, please contact Dr. Jeff Holdeman (jeffhold@iu.edu)