I joined CEES as Lecturer in Legacies of Communism in September 2015.

Before coming to Glasgow, I completed an MSc in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Oxford University and a PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE), where I held a fellowship following the conclusion of my doctorate. I was then Assistant Professor of History at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow (HSE). I have also held a fellowship at the Centre of Advanced Studies – South Eastern Europe at the University of Rijeka.

My research career started with a focus on the history of Communism with particular reference to the world’s first so-called ‘market socialist’ model: Tito’s Yugoslavia. My first book is a critical examination of how international economic and geopolitical pressures can exacerbate internal socio-political contradictions in semi-peripheral countries. The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment (I.B. Tauris, 2016) explores the ways in which a global dynamics shaped and undermined early but flawed attempts at crafting a participatory economy, contributing to the re-emergence of the pre-war national question that was later central to the bloody collapse of the country.

With a continued, but not exclusive, focus on the Balkans, I am now investigating how various state and non-state actors responded to the ‘global shocks’ of the 1970s and ever since. This research agenda will run along several connected tracks:

• Western foreign policy and competition with the USSR/Russia in the Balkans since the 1970s;

• Regional and continent-wide movements or initiatives interested in ‘alternative globalisation(s)’;

• Longer-term patterns acting as a backdrop to contemporary tensions in the Balkan region.

I am on the editorial board of the journal Europe-Asia Studies and of several websites outside academia like LeftEast.

• Yugoslav and Balkan history
• Communism
• International history of the Cold War and its legacies
• The European left and social movements
• Town or regional twinning
• Uneven and combined development
• Nationalism and federalism

List by: Type | Date

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD applicants in any of my main areas of research. I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.

Current Research Students

Matthew Blackburn, ‘Understanding Changing Russian Nationalism: A Cross-Generational Study’

Christopher Campbell, ‘The West and the Russian Orthodox Church's Role in Soviet Diplomacy’

Jamie Allan, ‘Gorky, Bukharin and the Politics of Rapprochement in the Soviet Cultural Sphere’

• Campbell, Christopher
  The Splintering of an Empire: US policy towards the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union 1977-1992

Undergraduate

Contributor, Convenor, CEES 1A: CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE AGE OF STALIN

Contributor, Convenor, CEES 1B: COMMUNISM AND ITS COLLAPSE

Honours option, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917

Honours option, WAR AND REVOLUTION IN THE BALKANS, 1804-2012

Postgraduate

Contributor, ISSUES IN RUSSIAN, EAST EUROPEAN, AND EURASIAN STUDIES

Contributor, RESEARCH METHODS FOR STUDYING RUSSIA, EASTERN EUROPE, AND EURASIA