Dr Julia Mannherz

Julia MannherzFellow and Tutor in History

I first became interested Russian culture after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when my West German school began offering Russian lessons to students who had recently moved there from the East. Fortunately, it also allowed Westerners like me to go along. Later, I studied history and Slavonic studies at the universities of Bonn and Kazan', before coming to Britain to take an MA at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London and a doctorate at Cambridge in 2005. I moved to Oxford in 2007, after having lectured at the universities of London and Göttingen.

Research

I work on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural history of the Russian empire and am especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches. I am currently completing a manuscript on the popular fascination with the supernatural in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries, which will be published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2012.

Teaching

At undergraduate level, I teach nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history and historiography, including general history papers 11-14 and the optional subject "Romance of the People" (with David Hopkin). I also teach "Theory and Methods" for Master's students and I am keen to supervise interesting research projects in nineteenth and twentieth century Russian history.

Recent Publications

"Geistererscheinungen und ihre Zeugen: Geschichten erzählen zwischen Positivismus und Spiritismus im ausgehenden Zarenreich" In WerkstattGeschichte. 2007 (1), 79-93.

"Spirits and the Fourth Dimension: Spiritualism and Science in Prerevolutionary Russia." Cultural and Social History. 8(1). 2011. 31-49.

“Слухи о «непокойном» доме в России в эпоху модерна”, in И.В. Нарский и др. (сост.) Слухи в России ХХ века: неформальная коммуникация и «крутые повороты» российской истории, Челябинск, 2011. 218-230.

“Placing the Hidden on Centre Stage: Occultism and Entertainment in Late Imperial Russia” In M. Hagemeister, B. Menzel, B. Glatzer Rosenthal (eds.), The New Age of Russia, Munich 2011. (forthcoming)

“Оккультизм и Первая Мировая Война”. Новое Литературное Обозрение. (forthcoming.)

Photograph by Evgenii Markov.