February 2015 | BIPS Travel Grant

My project Literature, Art, Diplomacy and Empire started last year with our first Russo-Persian workshop “Winning and Losing the Great Game: Literature, Art, and Diplomacy between Russia and Iran”, which I organised jointly with my colleague Angela Brintlinger, Professor of Russian at Ohio State University, at the Mershon Centre for International Security Studies, 7-8 November 2014.

As a second stage of this project, I organised our next conference “Russian diplomacy and the Great Game: past and present”, at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow jointly with my colleague there Professor Nikita Filin, which took place on 6 April 2015.

On the basis of these two conferences it was decided to publish the best papers presented both in Columbus and Moscow as a volume of proceedings. I am submitting a proposal to publish this volume as a part of the BIPS series.

Apart from receiving very useful feedback from the specialists in the field, during both conferences and ai a round table, especially those who work in the Moscow and St Petersburg, particularly at the Pushkin House (Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy) and the Hermitage Museum, I also continued my work at the State Central Historic Archive and in the archive of Russian Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg.

On 14 and 15 April I gave presentations at the monthly meeting at the Publishing House of the Written Heritage and in the Russian Embassy in Tehran, sharing the results of my research. I also continued my fieldwork in the Malek Museum, National Library, Museum of Expropriated Treasures and the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where we discussed the details of our next conference to be organised there next year.