SSEES History Staff Recent Publications, Public Engagement and Activity

Details of recent publications, engagement, media appearances and activities of SSEES History colleagues

April 2025

• Dr Anna Koch launched her new book 'Home after Fascism: Italian and German Jews after the Holocaust', at the Institute of Advanced Studies on 25 April. 

March 2024

• Dr Bojan Aleksov launched his book, "Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945" at Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome on 25 March.
• Prof Diane P. Koenker features in new audiobook 'Deputy Mayor Putin' (Download via Audible)
• On 15 March, Prof Alena Ledeneva, Dr Iryna Petrova and Dr Jakub Benes took part in a panel event at the IAS celebrating the legacy of Professor Teodor Shanin.
• On 7 March, Dr Bojan Aleksov was part of the panel at a book launch: A Concise History of Serbia by Professor Dejan Djokić , as part of the SSEES Southeast European Studies Seminar Series. 
• An interview with Prof Diane P. Koenker on Soviet vacationing is available on the podcast Imagining Soviet Georgia. 
• On 1 March, Dr Sergei Bogatyrev had a review published  of 'The Tsar’s Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1495–1745', by Russell E. Martin in The English Historical Review. 

February 2024

• On 24 February, Dr Bojan Aleksov spoke to New Books Network about his book "Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945". A recording can be accessed at: https://newbooksnetwork.com/jewish-refugees-in-the-balkans-1933-1945
• On February 4th,  Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski, Professor of Polish-Lithuanian History at SSEES, was awarded the Union of Polish Writers Abroad Literary Prize for 2023 in the category of popularising Polish culture in the world.

January 2024

• On January 19, Dr Bojan Aleksov's book "Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945" was promoted at the Humboldt University in Berlin by professors Hannes Grandits and Marija Vulesica.

  On January 22, the book was promoted at the Leibnitz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies of the University of Regensburg by professor Ulf Brunnbauer. A three page interview about the book was published by Belgrade-based Novi Magazin (18 January): 

  Novi Magazin

  Novi Magazin

December 2023

• On the 27 December, Dr Bojan Aleksov launched book "Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945" in Belgrade at the Jewish Cultural Centre Oneg Šabat. The speakers were Aron Fuks, President of Belgrade Jewish Community and historians Olga Manojlović Pintar and Milovan Pisarri. Read more https://jkc.rs.

November 2023

• On 23^rd November, Dr Bojan Aleksov spoke about confronting the past in former Yugoslavia, following the screening of “The Happiest Man in the World” by Teona Mitevska at the London Migration Film Festival.
• Dr Alessandro Iandolo spoke about his new book "Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968,' at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs on 8 November 2023. He also presented his book at Queen Mary University of London's History Department on 21 November.
• Dr Kristin Roth-Ey gave a talk titled 'Solidarity as pain: Soviet documentary film and the Vietnam war' at St Anthony's College, Oxford University (6 November 2023) as part of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Monday Seminar series.(6 November 2023).
• Prof Diane Koenker gave an interview which was published in the current issue of Kritika, vol. 24, no. 4 (Fall 2023), pp. 699-720, and is available on open access at https://kritika.georgetown.edu/24-4/#
   

October 2023

• Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski gave a plenary lecture: 'Wilno i wilnianie w roku szczęśliwym: maj 1791-maj 1792' [Vilnius and Vilnans in a happy year: May 1791-May 1792], at the conference Vilnius ir jo bendruomenės XIII–XXI a. [Vilnius and its communities in the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries], National Museum-Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius.(27 October 2023).
• Dr Anna Koch published a new book, ''Home after Fascism: Italian and German Jews after the Holocaust' (Indiana University Press, October 2023).
• SSEES Alumus, Felix Jeschke (PhD 2016, MRes East European Studies and BA History) was awarded the prize for Best Book in the Field of Czechoslovak Historical Studies, by The Czechoslovak Studies Association. His book is titled Iron Landscapes: National Space and the Railways in Interwar Czechoslovakia (Berghahn, 2021).
• Prof Diane P. Koenker participated as an 'International Expert'  in the Fourth International Workshop of ZARAH at Central European University, Vienna, 16-18 October 2023. ZARAH is an ERC-sponsored collaborative project on the study of Central and East European Women's Labor Activism in the 20th century.  She also presented a seminar during the workshop on 'The Gender of Service Work under State Socialism.'https://www.ceu.edu/project/zarah-womens-labour-activism
• Dr Alessandro Iandolo attended the Oxford University RESC Seminar on October 16, to discuss his new book '‘Arrested development: the Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968’'
• Dr Sergei Bogatyrev gave a talk on MA offerings to prospective students at an online event organised by UBASEECAS (The Undergraduate British Association of Slavonic, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies) on 12 October. 
• Dr Bojan Aleksov launched his new book 'Jewish Refugees in the Balkans,1933-1945' at the University of Graz on October 17.  
• Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski, was awarded the Union of Polish Writers Abroad Literary Prize for 2023 in the category of popularising Polish culture in the world. Read more. 

September 2023

• Dr Alessandro Iandolo won two awards from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) for his book“Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968” He was awarded the Marshall Shulman Book Prize for an outstanding monograph dealing with the international relations, foreign policy, or foreign-policy decision-making of any of the states of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe and the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize for an author’s first published monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past. 
• Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski gave a lecture titled 'Muzeum a nauka’ [The museum and science], at Muzeum Krakowa, Kraków (5 September 2023). On 27 September,he was a participant in a historians' debate on 'The Future of the Past', at Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków. He also was a  participant in a debate on how museums enliven history at the Polish History Museum, Warsaw. ( 30 September 2023)
• Dr Jakub Benes presented on the 1968 Prague Spring as one of three panelists at a SSEES Alumni Association event held at the Czech Embassy in London on 27 September. He also participated in a roundtable discussion at the Czech Embassy in London called ‘President Edvard Beneš – An unusual hero in the times of upheaval’ on 12 September 2023. 

August 2023

• On 31 August-1 September, Dr Jakub Benes presented a paper entitled ‘Peasant republics in Polish Galicia and Slavonia in 1918’ at the conference ‘Breaking Away: Micronations, Microstates, and the Contestation of Sovereignty in East Central Europe, 1918– Present: Political Thought, Aesthetic Output, and their Afterlives’ held on the island of Cres, Croatia.
• Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski gave an online talk titled ‘The Poniatowskis and the Enlightenment’, the study group on eighteenth-century networks, University of Tokyo. (2 August 2023)

July 2023

• Dr Tom Lorman gave the introduction to a screening of Jan Šikl's documentary 'Reconstruction of Occupation', held at the Czech Centre London, on July 17, 2023. 
• Prof Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski was a participant in a debate on the heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the festival 'Kresy – Bezkresy' [Borderlands - beyond borders] in Tykocin, Poland (1 July 2023). He also was a panelist in the final session of the conference 'The Future of Polish Studies', at the University of Warsaw in cooperation with the University of Cambridge, on 7 July 2023.
• Honorary Professor David Moon  published a volume, co-edited with Catherine Evtuhov and Julia Lajus, Thinking Russia's History Environmentally (New York: Berghahn Books, 2023), xiv + 330pp.