Matthias Neumann
  • 3.30A Arts and Humanities Building

Personal profile

Biography

Matthias Neumann is Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He has published widely on the history of childhood and youth in revolutionary Russia. His book The Communist Youth League and the Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1917-1932 was published by Routledge in 2011. It has been translated into Spanish and was published in South America 2019. Neumann is the co-editor of volume entitled Rethinking the Russian Revolution as Historical Divide: Tradition, Rupture and Modernity which was published with Routledge in 2017. He is also the President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES). His current research project examines cultural exchange programmes which enabled American children to visit the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Academic Background

M.A.  Modern History, Social and Economic History, and Political Science; Dresden University of Technology, Germany (2004)

Ph.D. Modern History; University of East Anglia (2008)

Administrative Posts

  • Professor Neumann is the Head of School.

Key Research Interests

Professor Neumann is particularly interested in the history of childhood and youth in the Soviet Union as well as cultural/citizen diplomacy during the Cold War. 

Professor Neumann is willing to supervise MA and research students interested in various aspects of the history of revolutionary Russia and the history of childhood and youth.

Supervision of PhD-projects to date:

  • ‘Cult of the 'Urka': criminal subculture in the Gulag, 1924-53’
  • ‘Becoming Soviet: Lost Cultural Alternatives in Ukraine, 1917-1933’
  • ‘The Soviet Children’s Picture Book, 1917-1935’
  • ‘Understanding and Treatment of Mental Illness in the Soviet Union after Stalin’
  • 'Constructing identity : Kaliningrad and the appropriation of place'
  • 'Educating the uneducable : deafblind education in the Soviet Union, 1925-1960'
  • Crisis and decline : the radical right movement in the Russian Empire, 1900-1914'

 

 

   

Teaching Interests

Professor Neumann has been teaching and contributing to numerous modules in modern history at the School of History:

Level 4:    

  • Introduction to Modern History
  • Visual(ising) History
  • The Holocaust in History
  • Age of Extremes

Level 5:  

  • Imperial Russian and Soviet History, 1861-1945
  • From Stalin to Putin: The Long Shadow of the War
  • The Cold War: A New History
  • Propaganda

 Level 6:    

  • Stalin and Stalinism: The USSR 1924-1953
  • Youth in Modern Europe

 MA:                 

  • Modernity in Russia

 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions