Russian and East European Studies

MPhil in Russian and East European Studies

Course Code | 003200 

Students usually have previous degrees in the social sciences, history, relevant languages and literature, or area studies. The course is interdisciplinary and the structure of options and 30,000-word thesis enables students to develop a particular regional or thematic expertise.

• Length of programme: Twenty-one months
• Core and optional courses:
  Core courses in: History of Twentieth-Century Russia and Eastern Europe; Politics, economics and international relations of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; Society and culture in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Methodology, research design and Russian language training is also provided.
• Programme specification

MSc in Russian and East European Studies

Course Code | 003210 

Students usually have previous degrees in the social sciences, history, relevant languages and literature, or area studies. The course is interdisciplinary and the 15,000-word thesis enables students to develop a particular regional or thematic expertise.

• Length of programme: Nine months (one academic year)
• Core Courses: History of Twentieth-Century Russia and Eastern Europe; Politics, economics and international relations of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; Society and culture in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Methodology and research design training is also provided; Russian language training is optional.
• Programme specification

There is an important concentration of library resources for Russian and East European Studies in Oxford. Besides a number of smaller specialised collections, there are four libraries with holdings of relevance to the MPhil and MSc programmes: the Bodleian Social Science Library, the Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library, the Central Bodleian Library and St Antony’s Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Library.

The Social Science Library contains substantial collections relating to contemporary East European social science, politics, economics and statistics.

The Taylor Bodleian Slavonic and Modern Greek Library houses the University’s principal collection of East European literary and linguistic studies and has one of the country’s leading collections in this field.

The Central Bodleian Library, which is the main University library, contains extensive and long-established collections covering most aspects of the history, culture and contemporary affairs of Russia and the whole of Eastern Europe.

St Antony’s College Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre Library has particularly good holdings (in Russian) on history, the October 1917 Revolution, literature and Soviet and post-Soviet politics and economics.

The Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College is a major focal point of research on Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia at Oxford University. The Centre organises seminars, addressed by visiting speakers, which have been weekly in term-time throughout the past fifty years. They have drawn in the most outstanding scholars in the field who come to Oxford both from the countries which are the object of study and from Western Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere.

Key staff involved in teaching the MPhil and MSc courses are:
Dr Roy Allison, Dr Catherine Andreyev, Dr Paul Chaisty, Dr Christopher Davis, Dr Jan Fellerer, Dr Nicolette Makovicky, Dr Judith Pallot, Dr Anna Pleshakova, Dr Gwendolyn Sasse, Professor Robert Service and Professor Andrei Zorin.

Information on academic staff profiles

Many students go on to doctoral work within other departments following the MPhil, and some students following the MSc. Other students follow careers in government, NGOs, banking, diplomacy and teaching, for example.