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’

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