Research

The Russian Studies department at Bristol has for many years enjoyed a reputation as one of the UK’s leading research departments in the field of Russian, Slavonic and East European Languages. In the Government’s most recent Research Assessment Exercise, RAE 2008, 15% of its work was judged to be ‘world-class’, 60% ‘internationally excellent’ or better, and 90% ‘internationally recognised’ or better.

The Department’s main research strengths lie in Russian literature from the 18^th century to the present, Russian intellectual history from the 18^th to the early 20^th centuries, and Russian popular culture of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, including cinema and animation. It is also one of very few Departments in the UK to conduct research in Czech and Slovak literature and culture.

Within these general research strengths there is a very wide range of specific projects which members of the Department are competent and ready to supervise:

Professor Michael Basker: Silver Age Literature, Pushkin, Nineteenth-Century Poetry, Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose Fiction.

Professor Basker is currently working on:

• a supplementary volume to the Russian Academy of Sciences 10-volume edition of the collected works of Gumiliov of which he is co-editor;
• a monograph on the Russian Symbolist novel.

Dr Birgit Beumers: Contemporary Russian Culture: Theatre and Drama, Advertising, Russian and Central Asian Cinema; Soviet Cultural Politics.

Dr Beumers is currently working on:

• a monograph on post-Soviet cinema;
• a monograph on Russian and Soviet animation.

Dr Rajendra Chitnis: Russian, Czech and Slovak literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Modern Czech and Slovak History and Culture.

Dr Chitnis is currently working on:

• a monograph on the reception of Russian literature in Czech literature and criticism from the nineteenth century to the present;
• a monograph on the representation of the village in Czech literature from the 1880s to the 1980s.

Dr Ruth Coates: Russian Nineteenth-Century Literature and Intellectual History, Silver Age Thought, Russian Orthodoxy.

Dr Coates is currently working on:

• the organisation of the BIRTHA-sponsored international ‘Vekhi Centenary Conference 1909-2009’ (7-9 July 2009) and publication of the proceedings;
• a monograph on the reception of the doctrine of deification in Russian thought.

Professor Derek Offord: Eighteenth- and Nineteeth-Century Russian History, Thought and Literature.

Professor Offord is currently working on:

• a monograph on non-fictional prose in 19^th-century Russia;
• the development of a major project on the cultural, linguistic, and social history of French in Russia.

In 2009-2011 the Department is also hosting a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Dr Olga Tabachnikova, who is working on a project entitled ‘Russian Irrationalism, Past and Present: Between Philosophy, Theology and the Arts’.

The Department hosts the annual symposium of the BASEES 19^th-Century Study Group. It contributes to School and Faculty research themes, for instance Romanticism, Conflict and Culture, and Testimonies, and has strong connections with research centres in Russia. The Department integrates postgraduates into regular staff-postgraduate research seminars, and also into the research activities of the School of Modern Languages and the Faculty.

Please direct all enquiries about postgraduate research degrees in Russian Studies to the School of Modern Languages Postgraduate Administrator: pg-modlang@bristol.ac.uk.

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