Issy Sawkins

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: History
Department: History
Research Centre/Unit: Exeter

I am a Second-Year PhD student based at the History Department of the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Professor James Mark, and the International Politics Department of the University of Aberystwyth, under the supervision of Dr Jenny Mathers. My thesis investigates the changing ways in which the Holocaust has been mobilised in the cultural and political sphere in the Russian Federation over the last decade. It explores how the Holocaust has become a far more explicitly politically instrumentalised memory, represented primarily in those spaces – namely museums, education, film, political speeches, whether in Russia or outside – where production has been closely controlled by the state. This project is funded by the SWWDTP.

Before moving to Exeter, I completed a Masters in Political Sociology of Russia and Eastern Europe at University College London, and a Bachelors in Modern Languages (Russian, Italian, French) at Durham University. 

I am co-editor for Ex-Historia and postgraduate representative for the British Association of Holocaust Studies.