Stephen Lovell joined the department in 2002 following a postdoctoral fellowship at St John’s College, Oxford. He received his MA and PhD from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University of London, after studying for his BA at King’s College, Cambridge.

Research Interests 

• Cultural and Social History of 19th and 20th century Russia

Stephen Lovell’s primary research interests lie in the social and cultural history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia. He is the author of the prize-winning books Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Cornell University Press, 2003) and Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919-1970 (Oxford University Press, 2015). His first book was on reading and print culture in twentieth-century Russia, and he has also written on the history of old age and generations. In addition, he is the author of three more general works on Russian history, most recently The Shadow of War: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1941 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). His most recent book is How Russia Learned to Talk: A History of Public Speaking in the Stenographic Age, 1860-1930 (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Professor Lovell would welcome applications from research students interested in working on:

• Any aspect of Russian history, 1750 to the present

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Professor Lovell teaches a range of modules on Russian and East European history. These include a module on Russian history in the 1870s through the prism of the novel Anna Karenina and a Special Subject on Russian political culture and communications in the revolutionary era from 1880 to 1940. He also contributes to a number of other modules at all levels from first-year undergraduate to MA.

PhD Supervision

Professor Lovell would welcome applications from research students interested in working on:

• 'Cultural and Social History of 19th and 20th Century Russia
• Voting and Political Culture in the Russian Empire and USSR

Stephen Lovell has written widely on Russian social and cultural history, with particular interests in media and communications, old age and generations, and urbanisation and urban culture. He is the author of the prize-winning Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (2003) and Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919-1970 (2015), as well as five other books on periods ranging from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He is currently researching the history of voting from Catherine the Great to Putin, a project supported by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Professor Lovell is a former editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and now serves on the editorial board of Past and Present.

Further Details

Selected Publications

• The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras (2000)
• Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (2003)
• The Shadow of War: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1945 to the Present (2010)
• Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919-1970 (2015)
• How Russia Learned to Talk: A History of Public Speaking in the Stenographic Age, 1860-1930 (2020)