Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Russia, Soviet Union, law, gender, sexuality, migration, revolution

About Me: I research and teach Modern Eurasian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. My speciality is the cultural, social and legal history of imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union. In particular, I examine Russia’s global connections, looking at the movement of ideas, legal forms and people across Eurasian borders. I also work in the fields of comparative legal history, history of gender and sexuality, and the cultural and intellectual history of the fin-de-siècle. I have published on shopping under Stalin, the legal regulation of pornography in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia, and the place of Russian refugees in the shifting international order of the interwar period. I have also spoken in various media outlets on topics as diverse as the love letters between Tsar Nicholas and Alexandra and sexuality in Tchaikovsky’s St. Petersburg.

Recent Publications: ‘Prostitution in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia,’ in Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Magaly Rodríguez García, eds., Selling Sex in the City: Prostitution in World Cities, 1600 to the Present, Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. 138-170.
‘The Highest Guardian of the Child: International Criminology and the Russian Fight Against Transnational Obscenity, 1885-1935,’ Russian History, 43:3-4, 2016, pp. 275-310.
‘Dressing the Shop Window of Socialism: Gender and Consumption in the Soviet Union in the Era of ‘Cultured Trade’, 1934-1953.’ Gender and History, 27:2, August 2015, pp. 417-445.

Media Coverage: Featured historian on UKTV's 'Nicholas and Alexandra: The Love Letters'; interviewed on Classic FM 'Case Notes: The Mystery of Tchaikovsky' and ABC Radio National 'Alexandra Kollontai.'