Lecture Series:
Soviet Biology in Changing Environments: Nature, Knowledge, and Life under Transformation
This lecture series addresses environmental change in three interconnected senses: transformations of natural environments, shifts in academic and institutional settings, and changes in biological objects and methods themselves. It examines how Soviet biology conceptualized variation, adaptation, and biological specificity under conditions of large-scale environmental intervention. Rather than focusing on a single figure, the series highlights diverse research programs and projects – such as plant introduction, acclimatization, and landscape transformation – to reconsider Soviet biology as a science of life changing together with its milieu.
Talks will be online via Zoom. Please register here: https://rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture-series/lecture-series-soviet-biology-in-changing-environments-nature-knowledge-and-life-under-transformation/.
Programme
12.05.2026 4:00 PM CET (register here)
Dmitriy Myelnikov (University of Cambridge) – Body as Environment in Soviet Medicine
19.05.2026 5:00 PM CET (register here)
Stephen Brain (Mississippi State University) – The Last Reform Before Collectivization: Biocentric Agriculture in the Soviet Union
09.06.2026 5:00 PM CET (register here)
Alexandra Noi (University of California, Santa Barbara) – Biology as Ideology: The Ideas of Human Plasticity and Soviet Carceral Practices
16.06.2026 4:00 PM CET (register here)
Anna Mazanik (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe) – Viruses, Vectors and Soviet Medicine in the Pacific Borderlands
This lecture series is organized by Sergei Shevchenko as part of the Gerda Henkel Foundation project Biological Instability and Its Management: A Soviet History, 1920s–1950s.
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