Professor Michael Hughes
ProfessorCareer Details
Michael Hughes carried out graduate work at the London School of Economics and was a British Council Scholar at Moscow University during the closing years of the Cold War. Before coming to Lancaster in 2013 he held posts at Brunel University and Liverpool University (where he served as Head of Department). He served as Head of the Department of History at Lancaster in 2015-18 and Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2018-20. He was a member of the History Sub-Panel for the UK Government's 2021 Research Excellence Framework. Hughes has held visiting fellowships at a number of American universities. He was Council Member and Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society from 2010-2014 and Treasurer of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) from 2015-19. He has broadcast widely on Russian history and politics on TV and Radio. Hughes has published seven monographs, along with a number of edited collections, and more than fifty journal articles and book chapters.
Research Overview
Michael Hughes is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Russia, originally focusing on the development of Russian conservative thought from 1815 down to the 1917 Revolution (particularly thinkers within the Slavophile tradition). His more recent work has explored the history of Anglo-Russian relations, seeking to place formal diplomatic relations in the context of wider cultural exchange, while his most recent research project explored the development of transnational revolutionary networks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hughes also has a long-standing interest in the role of religion in international politics.
Current Research
Michael Hughes has recently completed a biography of Feliks Volkhovskii, who from the 1860s to the 1880s played a significant role in the development of the revolutionary movement in Russia, before fleeing abroad to continue the struggle against the tsarist regime. He also co-edited a number of volumes in the 24 volume Russia's Great War and Revolution series, which brings together essays from scholars around the world in a major reassessment of the significance of 1917 in world history. Hughes is currently focusing on two research projects. The first explores how the development of Moscow Slavophilism in the 1850s was shaped by a distinctive mix of religious and philosophical utopianism with a more pragmatic engagement with the changes taking place in Russia around the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861). The second examines the impact of a number of Russian emigres on changing ideas of international politics in the years between the two world wars.
My Role
Michael Hughes is on research leave in academic year 2024-25.
Feliks Volkhovskii and the Ambiguities of Revolution
01/05/2022 → 31/03/2024
Research
- Centre for War and Diplomacy