About
I arrived to Swansea in 2014 from Canada, where my training consisted of a number of quite separate specialities. My fields of interest and research are, first, Russian history, then, war and society, and finally European history. This makes me a cultural historian with a special interest in war as a cultural practice, who researches Russia in the wider European context. I published my first book, “War and Enlightenment in Russia: Military Culture in the Age of Catherine II”, in 2020 with University of Toronto Press. The book won the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences award and received the honourable mention in the book prize adjudication from the Canadian Association of Slavists.
I am now working on two new, but different monograph-length projects, that take me to new research areas, both temporally and topically. One project I am pursuing is located in the field of information history, and will examine the rise of the “information state” in Russia, and the second project will explore the militarisation of Russian culture, politics, and society under President Vladimir Putin up to the annexation of the Crimea.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and in 2016, I was selected for the executive leadership training program “Challenging Human Environments and Research Impact for a Sustainable and Healthy Digital Economy” (CHERISH-DE), which annually brings together early-career researchers across disciplines in the United Kingdom.
I am currently the Admissions Officer for the War and Society programme and the convenor of the MA degree in War and Society. Simultaneously, I am also the Academic Integrity Officer for the Department of Political and Cultural Studies.