Board members

Dominic Lieven graduated in history from Cambridge University, first in the class of 1973; Kennedy Scholar at Harvard 1973-4; FCO 1974-5; PhD 1978. Lecturer, then Professor at the London School of Economics 1978-2011, Head of the Government Department 2001-4, Head of the International History Department 2009-11, member of Governing Council 2002-7. Elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2001. Elected Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge 2011-19. His books include Russia's Rulers under the Old Regime (Yale UP, 1988), Aristocracy in Europe (MacMillan and Columbia U.P. 1992), Nicholas II (John Murray and Columbia U.P., 1993), Empire. The Russian Empire and its Rivals (John Murray and Yale U.P., 2000), Russia against Napoleon. The Struggle for Europe, 1807-1814 (Penguin, 2009), Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia (Penguin, 2015). He was the editor of Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917 in the Cambridge History of Russia. His books have been translated into 11 languages. Russia against Napoleon won the Wolfson Prize and the Prix de la Fondation Napoleon as well as the award by the Russian state of the Order of Friendship. Towards the Flame won the Pushkin House (London) prize.

Martin Aust is chair of Eastern European and Russian History at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He received his PhD in Eastern European and Russian History from Free University Berlin in 2002. After that he held academic positions at CAU Kiel and LMU Munich. In 2009 he received a Heisenberg grant from German Research Foundation. In 2015 he served as visiting professor at the University of Basel. His lectures and courses cover Polish, Ukrainian and Russian History in modern times. Memory conflicts, imperial history as well as global history are Martin Aust's main areas of research. His latest book The Russian Revolution. From Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union (appeared in German in 2017 with C. H. Beck) explores the tensions of imperial rule and national questions with regard to revolutions in the early 20^th century. His next book will be about Imperial Heritages in Russia since 1991 (in German). It is under contract with C. H. Beck and will appear in 2019. Other publications include: Subjects. Autobiographical Practice in the Empires of the Romanovs, Hapsburgs and Ottomans in the 19th and Early 20th Century (co-editor, in German, 2015), Eastern European History and Global History (co-editor, in German, 2014), Imperial and Socialist Globalization. Russia and the Soviet Union in the World 1851 – 1991 (co-editor, in German, 2013), Poland and Russia in Struggle for Ukraine. Contested Memories of 17th-Century Wars from 1934 to 2006 (in German, 2009) and The Nobility’s Arguments about Land in Russia. An Inquiry into Changes of Neighborhood 1676 – 1796 (in german, 2003).

Dr Rosalind Polly Blakesley is Head of the History of Art Department at Cambridge University, where she is Reader in Russian and European Art, a Fellow of Pembroke College, and co-director of the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre. She has lectured at universities and museums across the world, curated exhibitions in London, Moscow and Washington DC, and serves on the boards of the Fitzwilliam Museum and Kettle’s Yard. She has also served as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she curated and wrote the catalogue for the acclaimed exhibition Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky in 2016. Blakesley’s latest book, The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia 1757-1881, won the Art Newspaper Russia Best Book Award, the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, and Honorable Mention from the Heldt Prize Committee for Best Book by a Woman in Slavic Studies. Other publications include From Realism to the Silver Age (co-editor, 2014); Russian Art and the West (co-editor, 2007); The Arts and Crafts Movement (2006); An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum (co-editor, 2003); and Russian Genre Painting in the Nineteenth Century (under her maiden name of Gray, 2000). Blakesley was awarded the Pushkin Medal by the Russian Federation in 2017.

Paul Bushkovitch is a graduate of Harvard University (BA 1970) and Columbia University (PhD 1975). Since 1975 he has taught at Yale University, and is now the Reuben Post Halleck Professor of History. His first work was devoted to the history of the Moscow merchants of the seventeenth century.  He then turned to the history of religion with Religion and Society in Russia: the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1992).  His other principal preoccupation has been the reign of Peter the Great in its political and cultural implications. His main work in that area is Peter the Great: the Struggle for Power 1671-1725 (2001, Russian translation 2008).  He is also the author of the Concise History of Russia (2012). Recently he has been at work on a study of succession to the throne and the notion of absolutism in Russia from the fifteenth century to the end of the reign of Peter. His principal interests remain the political and cultural history of Russia from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

Janet Hartley is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a historian of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russia with particular interests in Anglo-Russian relations, the social and administrative history of the Russian empire, and the relationship between warfare, state and society during Russia’s rise to great-power status. She is the author of six monographs, of six edited books and of numerous articles and chapters. Her books comprise: Guide to Documents and Manuscripts in the United Kingdom Relating to Russia and the Soviet Union (1987), Alexander I (1994, Russian translation in 1998), A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650-1825 (1999), Charles Whitworth: Diplomat in the Age of Peter the Great (2002), Russia, 1762-1825: Military Power, the State and the People (2008), Siberia: a History of the People (2014, Polish translation in 2015). She was on the advisory board of the International College of Economics and Finance, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, 2006-17.

Eric Hoesli is Professor at the Polytechnical Federal High School of Lausanne (SwissTech) and at the University of Geneva. After thirty years as journalist and managing editor in the main swiss media, he was appointed by both Universities in 2014 for setting up a new joint program of Russian Studies. He trained as a lawyer (Bachelor of Laws from the University of Lausanne) and is a graduate from the University of Geneva (post-Degree in Development Studies). He pursued a career as a political journalist which led him to work for the major Swiss media. As such, since 1984, he especially followed Soviet and then Russian developments for L'Hebdo magazine, Le Nouveau Quotidien, Le Temps, 24heures and La Tribune de Genève. In 1995, Eric Hoesli was appointed Chief Editor of L'Hebdo, the main news magazine of French-speaking Switzerland. In 1998, he became the Founder as well as the Director & Chief Editor of Le Temps, Swiss newspaper published in Geneva. He has been carrying out the function of Editorial Director of the Edipresse Group since September 2005. Since 2009, Eric Hoesli has been a Member of the Editorial Board of the Swiss press group Tamedia and Member of different Boards of Directors within press and televisual media, particularly the Swiss News Agency (ATS). He received several awards and decorations (Jean Dumur journalism prize, prize of the literary society of Geneva, journalism prize Switzerland-Russian, Knight of Arts and Letters- Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française), in particular for his work on Russia. In 2014, he was appointed Professor (Professeur ordinaire) at the Polytechnical Federal High School of Lausanne and Visiting Professor (Professeur invité) at the University of Geneva. He is in charge of a Joint Program of Russian Studies for both universities and is currently setting a joint program between Swiss universities and several academic and research institutions in Northern Russia and Russian Arctic. Since 1984, he has written countless articles and reports on the USSR, the post-soviet and the Russian worlds’ evolution in L'Hebdo, Le Nouveau Quotidien, Le Temps and other Swiss, French and Belgian publications. Eric Hoesli is the author of A la Conquête du Caucase (Syrtes, 700 p., Paris 2006) and L’Epopée sibérienne (Syrtes/Paulsen, 850 p., Paris 2018). He was born in 1957, is married and has two children.

Ekaterina Pravilova is a historian of Imperial Russia in the History Department at Princeton University. Pravilova received her doctorate degree from the Russian Academy of Sciences, and her first two books (Legality and Individual Rights. Administrative Justice in Russia (2000) and Finances of Empire. Money and Power in Russian Policy in the Imperial Borderlands (2006)) were published in Russian.  In 2006, after several years of researching and teaching at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the European University at St. Petersburg, Ekaterina Pravilova moved to Princeton University, where she began her new research project on the history of property in the Russian Empire. This project resulted in the publication of A Public Empire. Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia (Princeton University Press, 2014). She is currently working on two projects: the first project focuses the epistemology of social sciences and humanities in imperial Russia, and the second project explores the political history of monetary reforms.

Marie-Pierre Rey is a former student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). She received her PhD and her “habilitation à diriger des recherches” from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She is currently Professor of Russian and Soviet History, Director of the Centre de Recherches sur l'Histoire des Slaves (Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) and Director of the Laboratory SIRICE ( Sorbonne Lab on Identities, International Relations and Civilizations of Europe, that gathers 50 researchers and 130 PhD students. She has published several articles devoted to Soviet Foreign Policy and books on Tsarist Russia. Among them are: La Russie face à l’Europe d’Ivan le Terrible à Vladimir Poutine (Paris: Flammarion, Champs Histoire, 2017); 1814, Un Tsar à Paris (Paris, Flammarion,  2014),  also published in Russian by ROSSPEN; L’effroyable tragédie, une nouvelle histoire de la campagne de Russie (Paris: Flammarion, 2012), the book received a prize from the Napoleon Fondation and has been published in Russian  (ROSSPEN) and in Czech; Alexandre Ier, le tsar qui vainquit Napoleon (Paris: Flammarion, 2009 and 2013), published in Russian (ROSSPEN) and in English (Northern Illinois University Press).The book was distinguished  by the  French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.

Frithjof Benjamin Schenk is professor of Russian and East European history at Basel University. After defending his PhD at Free University Berlin he worked as assistant professor at Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munich (2003-2011). His fields of research are: history of memory and discourses of collective identity in Russia and Eastern Europe, imagined geography and mental maps, history of mobility and social space, comparative imperial history, history of autobiographical writing. His most important publications include: Aleksandr Nevskij : Heiliger - Fürst - Nationalheld. Eine Erinnerungsfigur im russischen kulturellen Gedächtnis (1263-2000) (Köln: Böhlau, 2004, Russian translation: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2007), Russlands Fahrt in die Moderne. Mobilität und sozialer Raum im Eisenbahnzeitalter (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014, Russian translation: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2016) and Imperial subjects. Autobiographische Praxis in den Vielvölkerreichen der Romanovs, Habsburger und Osmanen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Köln: Böhlau, 2015, co-ed. with Martin Aust).

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye is Professor of Russian history at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His research interests focus on 18^th- and 19^th-century Russian cultural, intellectual, diplomatic and military history. Schimmelpenninck is the author of, among other, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001) and Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).  Schimmelpenninck is currently writing a book about tsarist expansion into Central Asia, “Russia’s Great Game: The Struggle for Masrtery in Central Asia.” He is also coediting a volume on “The International History of Russia’s Great War” for the Russia’s Great War and Revolution series.