Dr Susan Grant
Humanities and Social Science
I am a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, with a particular interest in healthcare history. My first book, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s, examined the construction of the New Soviet Person through an analysis of the ideology, propaganda, and practice of physical culture. The Soviet project attempted to improve the health of both the physical and social body, seeking to shape a new socialist citizenry. In 2017 I edited a book that examines comparative aspects of Soviet healthcare, titled Russian and Soviet Health Care from an International Perspective: Comparing Professions, Practice and Gender (London: Palgrave Macmillan). More recently, I have co-edited with Dr James Ryan a volume on Stalinism, Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism: Complexities, Contradictions, and Controversies (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), to mark the work of Prof. Geoffrey Roberts. My second book, Soviet Nightingales: Caring under Communism (forthcoming, Cornell University Press, April 2022), addressees wider questions of Stalinism and the Soviet project. Through an analysis of nurses and middle medical workers I show shifting attitudes to gender, class, and care in the USSR. Beginning with the origins of Russian nursing in the nineteenth century, I track the story of nurses through the major events in Soviet history to the end of the socialist experiment. This book will be Open Access thanks to LJMU.
My current project, "Growing Old in the Soviet Union, 1945-1991," received a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (Ref No: 209842/Z/17/Z). Research conducted over the course of the award will analyse state approaches to ageing that include scientific research, healthcare policy, medical services, and psychiatry. The project also explores subjective aspects of ageing by finding out what it was like growing old in the world's first socialist society, as well as the influence of gerontology in the Soviet Union and abroad. Together with Dr Isaac McKean Scarborough, I am co-editing the volume, Geriatrics and Ageing in the Soviet Union: Medical, Political and Social Contexts (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming October 2022), that explores the practice of geriatrics, the science of gerontology, and the experience of growing old . The volume will be fully Open Access thanks to the Wellcome Trust and LJMU. For more information about the project please visit www.sovietageing.com.
I welcome expressions of interest from those wishing to undertake a PhD on any of the above themes.
Academic appointments
Reader in Modern European History, Liverpool John Moores University, 2015 - present
Highlighted publications
Grant S. 2022. Soviet Nightingales: Caring for Communists Cornell University Press
Book
Grant S. 2022. Geriatrics and Ageing in the Soviet Union: Medical, Political and Social Contexts Scarborough I. Bloomsbury Academic. London Publisher Url
Grant S. 2022. Soviet Nightingales: Caring for Communists Cornell University Press
Grant S. 2020. Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism: Complexities, Contradictions, and Controversies Ryan J. Bloomsbury Academic. London Publisher Url
Grant S. 2017. Russian and Soviet Health Care from an International Perspective: Comparing Practice, Gender and Care, 1880-1960 Grant S. Palgrave Macmillan. London 978-3-319-44170-2 DOI
Grant S. 2013. Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s Routledge 9780415806954
Journal article
Grant S. 2017. Nursing and the Public Health Legacies of the Russian Revolution. American Journal of Public Health, 107 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Grant S. 2015. The American Hospital in Moscow: A Lesson in International Cooperation, 1917-23 MEDICAL HISTORY, 59 :554-574 DOI Author Url
Grant S. 2014. ‘Bolsheviks, Revolution, and Physical Culture’ International Journal for the History of Sport, 31 :724-734 DOI Author Url Publisher Url
Grant S. 2014. ‘Nurses Across Borders: Displaced Russian and Soviet Nurses after World War One and World War Two’ Nursing History Review, 22 :13-13 DOI
Grant S. 2011. The politics and organization of physical culture in the USSR during the 1920s Slavonic and East European Review, 89 :494-515 DOI
Grant S. 2010. The Fizkul'tura generation: Modernizing lifestyles in early Soviet Russia Soviet and Post Soviet Review, 37 :142-165 DOI
Grant S. 2010. Public and Private Physical Culture: The Soviet State and the Construction of the New Person Robinson, Neil . Irish Slavonic Studies, 23 :60-66
Grant S. 2010. The collective agitation of arms and legs: Organising mass physical culture in 1920s Soviet Russia Revolutionary Russia, 23 :93-113 DOI
Chapters
Grant S. 2017. Devotion and Revolution: Nursing Values 1917-1970 Willimott A, Neumann M. Rethinking the Russian Revolution as Historical Divide: Tradition, Rupture, and Modernity Routledge. London
Grant S. 2017. ‘Nurses in the Soviet Union: Explorations of Gender in State and Society’ Melanie Ilic . Palgrave Handbook on Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia Routledge DOI
Grant S. 2016. Creating Cadres of Professional Soviet Nurses, 1936-1941 Grant S. Russian and Soviet Healthcare in International Perspective: Comparing Practice, Gender and Care, 1880-1960 Palgrave Macmillan. London DOI
Grant S. 2016. From war to peace: Russian nurses, 1917-221 Adele Lindenmeyr , Christopher Read , Peter Waldron . Russia's Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914-22: Book 2: The Experience of War and Revolution :251-251 Slavica. Bloomington, Indiana 978-0-89357-426-0 Publisher Url
Other invited event:
History Perspectives Seminar Series, LJMU, I am co-organising (with my colleague Dr Tom Beaumont) the History Perspectives Seminar Series for the academic year 2016/17. Throughout the academic year we invite experts to share their cutting edge research with staff, graduate, and undergraduate students.. 2016
Editorial boards:
Sport, Politics, and History, Member of Editorial Board. 2015
Other Professional Activity:
I have been invited to peer-review book manuscripts and journal articles..