Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Politics and culture in late Imperial Russia
- Russian identity, Russian nationalism
- Historiography of modern Russia
- Political violence
- Memory
Current research
Broadly speaking, my research work has encompassed two major areas to date.
The first of these is the radical right in late imperial Russia. This was the subject of my first monograph, titled The Radical Right in Late Imperial Russia: Dreams of a True Fatherland? (Routledge, 2016) The work assessed the changing social dynamics of the populist-nationalist radical right as it emerged in the early twentieth century in Russia. Key concepts examined were national identity, the use of anti-Semitism and the adoption of violence by the major groups assessed. I also considered the civic society projects of the far right and their approach to renewing Russia in the late imperial period, which many of their activists saw as a time of degeneration and decay. This is also something I have explored in research articles.
My current research is on martyrdom and martyrology in revolutionary Russia. I am most interested in the wave of martyrdoms on both right and left that emerged in the era of mass violence around the 1905 revolution in Russia, but I will contextualize the project more broadly – cases I have examined span from 1881 to 1918. The project will explore the intersections between these violent, noble deaths that emerged in public life in the late imperial period. Articles on this project have been published in The Russian Review (2022) and The Slavonic and East European Review (2022): I am continuing to work on the core of what I envisage to be my second monograph.
I am also interested in the history of sport and physical culture in late imperial Russia. I published an article in The Slavonic and East European Review on the Sokol movement in 2017, and I envisage future research in this area.