EDUCATION
PhD University of California, Berkeley, History 2020
MA University of California, Berkeley, History 2015
BA Brown University, History and Slavic Studies (honors) 2010
books and monographs
A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’t Tell (PublicAffairs, 2024)
Dying Empire: Visions of the End in Late Socialism (PhD dissertation completed at UC Berkeley, 2020)
PEER-Reviewed PUBLICATIONS
“Leonid Brezhnev and the Elixir of Life.” In Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Jillian Porter and Maya Vinokour, Springer Nature, 2023
“Darkness at Noon: On History, Narrative, and Domestic Violence.” The American Historical Review, June 2021
“Late Socialism as a Time of Weeping: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Vladimir Vysotsky.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, summer 2021
“Patriarchal Primitivism: Dying Peasant Women and the Soviet Anti-Developmental Turn.” View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, summer 2021
Fellowships and AWARDS
2022 Kennan Institute Short-Term Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center
2020 Friends of Cal History Dissertation Prize for the department’s best dissertation, UC Berkeley
2020 Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, Florence
2020 Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Graduate Essay Prize, UC Berkeley
2019 Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund Dissertation Fellowship
2019 Allan Sharlin Memorial Fellowship, UC Berkeley
2019 Visiting Scholar at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University
2018 American Councils Academic Fellowship in Russia, Carnegie Corporation
2018 Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Summer Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley
2017 Stephen F. Cohen-Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Research Fellowship
2016 Association for Women in Slavic Studies Graduate Essay Prize
2015 Western Association of Slavic Studies Outstanding Graduate Student Essay Prize
2015 Gurevich Memorial Prize in Russian History, University of California, Berkeley
2014 Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study, University of California, Berkeley
2010 Fulbright Scholarship, U.S. Department of State
2010 Marjorie Harris Weiss Memorial Premium for the outstanding undergraduate woman majoring in History, Brown University
2010 Yegen History Department Prize for Outstanding Honors Thesis, Brown University
2009 Helen Terry MacLeod Research Grant for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University
2009 Elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a Junior, Rhode Island Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society
2008 Kenneth A. Greif Prize for Distinguished Work in Shakespeare, Brown University
Writing and Editing
2010-present Freelance Writer and Editor
2017-2018 Podcast host for New Books Network
2015 Writer for Berkeley Social Science Matrix
2011-2014 Editor and Reporter at The Moscow News
2007-2010 Head Fellow at Brown University Writing Fellows Program
2009 Intern at Rodnoi Gorod, Iaroslavl', Russia
2008-2009 Features Editor at The College Hill Independent, Brown University
2007-2008 Staff Writer and Copy Editor at the Brown Daily Herald, Brown University
Research
2010-2011 Fulbright Scholar at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
2010 Research Assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
2009 Research Assistant at the National Security Archive
2009 Research Assistant at Brown University Department of History
SELECTED presentations
2020 “Modernity as Melancholy: The History of Emotions in the Late Soviet Union.” Talk presented at the European University Institute, Florence.
2020 “A Joyful Tragedy. Viktor Popkov’s Workers and Widows in Late Soviet Culture.” Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC.
2019 Leonid Brezhnev and the Elixir of Life. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference, San Francisco
2019 Eurydice’s Return: Anna German and Estrada in the Eastern Bloc. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Summer Conference, Zagreb
2018 Visions of the End in Late Socialism. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference, Boston
2017 Decline and Fall in the Fourth Rome. Presented at the International Forum for Young Scholars of Soviet and Post-Soviet History and Culture, Higher School of Economics, Moscow
2016 ‘It’s Hard to Live to the End of the Line’: Brezhnev, Vysotsky, and Death in Developed Socialism. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC
2016 Faces of Death: Soviet Immortality in Plaster. Presented at Scientific Utopias in the Soviet Union conference, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
2015 ‘The Final Struggle’: The Art of the Soviet Death Mask. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Philadelphia, PA
2015 The Death of Parmesan: Material Culture, Media, and the Past in Russian Everyday Life. Presented at Florida International University
2015 ‘The Final Struggle’: The Art of the Soviet Death Mask. Presented at the Western Association for Slavic Studies conference, Portland, OR
teaching
Spring 2021 Research seminar for PhD students at EUI. Co-taught with Alexander Etkind
Max Weber Program teacher certification. Includes teaching workshops for masters students at Masaryk University
Spring 2017 History of the Soviet Union. Taught two weekly one-hour sections.
Fall 2016 US Social History from 1865 to the Present. Grading and tutorials.
Spring 2016 Staging the American City: A Cultural History of Broadway. Taught two weekly one-hour sections.
Fall 2015 History of Science. Taught two weekly two-hour sections.
Service and leadership
2021 Organizing committee for Max Weber June Conference
2020 Volunteer at New York Cares
2016-2017 Graduate student speaker at the Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) at UC Berkeley
2015-2016 Co-organizer of the Berkeley Russian History Working Group (kruzhok)
2015 Writing Coach at WriterConnect; mentored eighth-grade students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, CA
2009 Volunteer at Doverie (NGO for families and children), Iaroslavl', Russia
languages
Russian, Polish, French