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Dr Andy Willimott

Andy

Senior Lecturer in Modern Russian History

Email: a.willimott@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

I am a historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, with a particular interest in revolution, radicalism, and historical memory. 

My award-wining book ‘Living the Revolution: Urban Communes & Soviet Socialism, 1917-1932’ (Oxford University Press)—recipient of the Alexander Nove Book Prize and Honorable Mention W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize—tells the story of fiery-eyed, bed-headed youths determined to throw their lot in with the Bolsheviks after October 1917. Reviewers called it ‘Essential’, ‘original and engaging,’ ‘Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and bursting with narrative appeal.’

I am co-editor of ‘Rethinking the Russian Revolution as Historical Divide’ (Routledge), which offers a pioneering examination of how Russian tradition and pan-European socialist ideas came together to forge the Soviet experience 'across 1917'; and ‘Openness and Idealism: Soviet Posters, 1985-1991’ (Skira), containing over 200 illustrations, interviews with Soviet poster designers, and interpretative essays on the history and aesthetics of Glasnost-era posters.

My next book, ‘Imagining the Revolution,’ under contract with Oxford University press, examines the afterlives of the Paris Commune and the emotional content of socialist story-telling in revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union.

I joined Queen Mary as an Inaugural Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities &Social Sciences (IHSS) in 2019. Before that, I was assistant professor at the University of Reading, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies, and Lecturing Fellow at the University of East Anglia.  

I am the founding director of the Centre for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CEREES) at Queen Mary University of London.

 

 

 

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