Vera Tolz is Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies

• MA Classics (St Petersburg, 1981)
• PhD Russian and East European Studies (Birmingham, 1993)

My research interests include:

Nationalism, ethnic politics and the relationship between imperial and national visions of collective identity in modern and contemporary Russia. I published a monograph, Russia: Inventing the Nation (2001), two co-edited books, Nation and Gender in Contemporary Europe (2005) and Nation and Empire at War (2015),  and multiple articles on the construction of different definitions of Russian nationhood by the intellectual and political elites in the course of the last three centuries. I have been particularly interested in the relationship between discursive constructions of identity and policies adopted by the ruling elites. 

Since 2010, my research has been focused on the uses of identity-related discourses in Russian state media for legitimizing the country’s policies at home and abroad. See my book with Stephen Hutchings, Nation, Ethnicity and Race on Russian Television (2015).

In my earlier work, I studied the relationship between academics, their scholarship and political power in late imperial Russia and the USSR in the 1920s-1940s. See my books 'Russia's own Orient': The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (2011) and Russian Academicians and the Revolution (1997).

Research Posts, Grants and Fellowships:

2023-2026: AHRC research grant (with Profs. Hutchings and Mihelj and Drs Lewis, Sadler and Yates) ‘(Mis)Translating Deceit after the Cold War: Disinformation as a Translingual, Discursive Dynamic’ (£ 999,722) 

2017-2020: AHRC research grant (with Profs. Hutchings and Gillespie, and Dr Willis), 'Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: From the Cold War to "Information War"?' (£ 885,125)

2010-2013: AHRC research grant (with Prof. Hutchings), 'An Analysis of Russian Television Representations of Inter-Ethnic Cohesion Issues' (£ 426,395)

2004-2007: AHRB research grant, 'Oriental Studies and Russian National Identity: the 1870s – 1920s'

2003-2004: British Academy Senior Research Fellowship

1999-2000: Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton

1994-1995: Fellow, Russian Research Center, Harvard University

Research Management and Editorial Roles 

• Co-Director of the AHRC-funded UK national Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) (2012-2016)
• Member of the Management Board of the AHRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in East European Language-Based Area Studies, CEELBAS CDT (2015-2022) 
• Currently member of the editorial and advisory boards of Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch and The Library of Modern Russia book series at Bloomsbury 

International Collaborations

I was member of research teams of the following international collaborative projects:  

2013-2015 ‘Nation-building, Nationalism and the New "Other" in Contemporary Russia', led by Prof. Pal Kolsto (University of Oslo, Norway) (funded by the Research Council of Norway)

2009-2014 ‘Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914-1922. The Centennial Reappraisal,’ led by Dr. Anthony (University of Aberdeen) and Prof. John Steinberg (Georgia State University, USA) 

2000-2002 ‘Discourses of Global Ambitions and Global Failures: Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in Post-1945 Russia and East Central Europe,’ led by Prof. Gyorgy Peteri (University of Trondheim, Norway) (funded by the Research Council of Norway)

1998-1999 ‘State Patronage of Science and Culture in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: 1945-1989,’ directed by Prof. Gyorgy Peteri (University of Trondheim, Norway) (funded by the Research Council of Norway)

1996-1998 ‘Academia in Upheaval: The Origins and Demise of the Communist Academic Regimes in Russia and East-Central Europe,’ directed by Prof. Gyorgy Peteri (University of Trondheim, Norway) and Prof. Michael David-Fox (then at the University of Maryland, USA) (funded by the Spencer Foundation, USA)

I am an elected Fellow of the UK's Academy of Social Sciences (since 2018).