Dr Shane O’Rourke
Senior Lecturer, University of York
Speaker's biography
Dr Shane O’Rourke is a historian of Russia and has been a teacher of Russian history for the last thirty years. He has written extensively on Russian and Soviet history, including two books and many articles. He is finishing a book comparing the emancipation of serfs in Russia and slaves in Brazil. He is a fluent Russian speaker and also learnt Portuguese to study Brazilian slavery. He has taught many courses on Russian history, including a post-graduate course on Russian Foreign Policy over the last 200 years, the Russian Revolution and Catherine the Great. He has been going to the Soviet Union/Russia for over thirty years and in the last eight years, has made many visits to Ukraine, including Lugansk and Donetsk