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Lecturer in Russian, University of Glasgow

My main research area is Gulag literature. I have published extensively on the topic: my first book explores the works written by the poets and writers kept in the Solovki prison camp and publishing activity within it between 1923 and 1930. I've also explored questions such as the genre status of Gulag literature, Gulag poetry, oral poetry composed within the Soviet camps, trauma and form in Gulag literature, humour in the Gulag, autobiographical issues related to camp writing, and articles devoted to authors such as F. Dostoevskii, V. Grossman, G. Herling-Grudzinski, V. Shalamov, A. Solzhenitsyn, and N. Zabolotskii.

I'm fascinated by the relationship between State power and literature. This has inspired me in my research on samizdat literature, contemporary Russian literature and on the "Zhivago affair". Together with Claudia Criveller (University of Padua), I founded the international peer-reviewed journal «AvtobiografiЯ. Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture» (www.avtobiografija.com.

I am the creator of the virtual exhibition Beauty in Hell: Culture in the Gulag (https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/visit/exhibitions/virtualexhibitions/beautyinhellcultureinthegulag/ ""). My books include Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps. (Cambridge: Legenda, 2018); and the forthcoming 1111. The Memory War on the Gulag in Russia.

Experience

  • –present
    Lecturer in Russian, University of Glasgow