University of Richmond professor receives $30,000 grant to conduct research in Russia

June 9, 2008

Jeffrey Hass, associate professor of sociology at the University of Richmond, will conduct collaborative research in Russia under a $30,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research.

Hass will make several trips to the country, totaling about five months. He will visit archives in St. Petersburg, while his collaborator, Prof. Nikita Lomagin of St. Petersburg University, will conduct research in Vyborg and Moscow.

Hass and Lomagin will focus their research on the World War II blockade of Leningrad as an example of a broader concept of how war shapes conceptions and practices of social-political normality and power relations within and between state and society.

"In 2001, I made my first investigation of archival materials about the blockade. At this point, I began to envision a project using the blockade as a case study for investigating relations within society and between regime/state and society in the context of the stresses of war—and the blockade was very stressful," said Hass.

Hass and Lomagin plan to write articles, conference papers and eventually a book about their project.