Research in Russian and East European Studies
Nation-topping ranking for Russian and East European Studies Department at the University of Manchester
Russian and East European Studies has now been officially assessed in the UK's independent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as the best in the nation for research in its field.
In national rankings produced by the Times Higher Education and based on quality profiles produced for the RAE 2008 exercise, Russian and East European Studies at Manchester comes out ahead of all other UK universities.
In the RAE submission made by the department, 35% of its research activity was judged to be 'world leading' and a total of 70% was rated as 'world leading' or 'internationally excellent.'
Our Research
Staff in Russian and East European Studies conduct research of an interdisciplinary nature across a broad range of subjects, including medieval Slavic cultures; nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and intellectual history; Soviet and post-Soviet cinema and the media; Russian and Soviet popular culture; gender studies; nationalism and ethnic politics in Russia and Eastern Europe; Balkan Studies and post-communist transition in East Central Europe. The Discipline of Russian and East European Studies constitutes a core group of the Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Conferences and workshops organised by staff in Russian and East European Studies include 'Representing Islam: Comparative Perspectives' and 'The Mass Media, Freedom of Speech and the War on Terror in Russia and the UK'. A focal point for the discipline's research activity is a regular Research Seminar, which features a mix of internal and external speakers and promotes debate between staff and postgraduates across the full spectrum of their research interests.
Research Projects
- Mediating Post-Soviet Difference: An Analysis of Russian Television Representations of Inter-Ethnic Cohesion Issues (AHRC-funded)
- Post-Soviet Russian Television Culture: A Semiotic Analysis (AHRC-funded)
- Television Representations of Islam as security threat in Russia, France and the UK A Comparative Analysis (AHRC-funded)
- Housing as a Gendered Issue in Twentieth-Century Russia (AHRC-funded)
- Oriental Studies and Russian National Identity (AHRC-funded)
- Singing the Self: Guitar Poetry, Community and Identity in the post-Stalin Period (AHRC-funded)
- The Memory of the Second World War in East Central Europe post-1989 (funded by the Leverhulme Trust)
Research Centres
- Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
- Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS)
- Centre for Cultural Forms of Politics in Modern Europe
Staff Specialisms
Dr Adelina Angusheva-Tihanov's research is primarily in the area of medieval Slavic cultures. Her second area of expertise is literature and cultural identities in the Balkans in the twentieth century.
Dr Lynne Attwood is a specialist on gender issues in Soviet and post-Soviet society, and she has a related interest in the depiction of women in film. Her recent research has focused on the construction of female identity in the early Soviet periodical press, and she is currently completing a project on the problem of private and public space as it affected women's lives in the Stalin era. Her upcoming research project will examine housing as a gendered issue in twentieth-century Russia.
Emertitus Professor Elsworth's major area of research is early twentieth-century literature, with a particular focus on the Symbolist movement. He has recently translated (with introduction and notes) Andrei Belyi's The Silver Dove, which is widely regarded as Russia's first modernist novel. He has also written on aspects of Russian literature since Stalin.
Professor Stephen Hutching's research focuses on twentieth century Russian literature, cultural and literary theory, film and media studies. He is currently working on an AHRC-funded project on Russian television representations of inter-ethnic cohesion issues.
Dr Ewa Ochman specialises in contemporary Polish cultural history. Her research focuses on the memory of war and the Holocaust in East Central Europe post-1989.
Dr Rachel Platonov specialises in Russian and Soviet popular culture, including 'avtorskaia pesnia' ('author's song' or 'guitar poetry') and circus. Her recent work has focused on 'guitar poetry' as a medium of self-fashioning and communication. Works in progress include conference papers and articles on popular creativity in the Soviet labour camps and on circus and the grotesque in early twentieth-century Russia.
Professor Galin Tihanov's main research interests are European, particularly Russian, intellectual and cultural history and various issues in comparative literature. He is currently working on a book on the uses of the Romantic intellectual tradition in twentieth-century-Germany.
Professor Vera Tolz's main research interests are Russian nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ethnic politics in contemporary Russia and the relationship between intellectuals and political power in late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project which examines the applicability of Edward Said's work on Orientalism to the Russian case.
Mrs Katya Young's research is primarily in the area of Russian prose in the last decades of Soviet rule and in the post-Soviet period. Her current project offers an analysis of Sergej Dovlatov's works in the context of post-Soviet literature. Mrs Young is the editor of the bi-annual journal Slavonica, which is devoted to cultures, languages and histories of Russia and Eastern Europe.