Biography
I am a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, with a particular interest in healthcare history. My first book examined the construction of the New Soviet Person through physical culture ideology, propaganda and practice. The Soviet project attempted to improve the health of both the physical and social body, seeking to shape the New Soviet Person. My second book project, Soviet Nightingales: Caring for Communists, 1917-1991, focuses on Soviet nurses and medical workers in their quest for greater rights and professional recognition. I analyse Soviet politics and society through the prism of nursing, illuminating attitudes to gender, class, and care.
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. Such a holistic approach to examining ageing will provide scholars with an important blueprint for the study of ageing societies in history and contribute to how people and societies understand the ageing experience. Three postdoctoral research fellows will conduct research on aspects of ageing and gerontology to help deepen our understanding of late Soviet society and attitudes to ageing. 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
Lecturer in Modern European History, Liverpool John Moores University, 2015 - present
Publications
Book review
Grant S. 2018. The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War: Red Sport, Red Tape SLAVIC REVIEW, 77 :274-275 DOI Author Url
Grant S. 2017. Russia's Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More than Biding Men's Wounds SLAVIC REVIEW, 76 :250-251 DOI Author Url
Journal article
Grant S. 2017. Nursing and the Public Health Legacies of the Russian Revolution American Journal of Public Health, DOI Author 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’ The International Journal for the History of Sport, 31 :724-734 DOI Author Url Publisher Url
Grant S. 2013. Nurses across borders: Displaced russian and soviet nurses after world war I and world war II Nursing History Review, 22 :13-36 DOI Author Url
Grant S. 2011. The politics and organization of physical culture in the USSR during the 1920s Slavonic and East European Review, 89 :494-515
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
Grant S. ‘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. ‘The Politics of Physical Culture in the 1920s’ Slavonic and East European Review, 89 :494-494 DOI Publisher Url
Grant S. ‘‘‘The Collective Agitation of Arms and Legs”: Revolutionizing Physical Culture Organization, 1924-1934’ Revolutionary Russia: journal of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution, :142-165
Chapters
Grant S. 2017. Devotion and revolution: Nursing values Rethinking the Russian Revolution as Historical Divide :171-185 9781138945623 DOI
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. From war to peace: Russian nurses, 1917-221 Russia's Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914-22: Book 2: The Experience of War and Revolution :251-272 9780893574260
Denton P. 2013. Introduction Denton P. Pharmaceutics The Science of Medicine Design Oxford University Press 9780199655311 DOI
Grant S. 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. ‘From War to Peace: The Fate of Nurses and Nursing under the Bolsheviks’ Adele Lindenmeyr , Christopher Read , Peter Waldron . Russia’s Home Front, 1917-1922: The Experience of War and Revolution Slavica. Bloomington, Indiana Publisher Url
Grant S. 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
Conference publication
Grant S. 2013. Razvitie sestrinskogo dela v Rossii i Sovetskom Soiuze Posternak, A and Kozlovtseva, E . Pravo-Slavnyi Tikhonskii Gumanitarnyi Universitet, Blagotvoritel’nost’ i sotsial’naya politika gosudarstva v Rossii XIX XX vekov Publisher Url
Grant . 2012. From Centre to Periphery: The Effort to Establish Soviet Physical Culture in the National Republics and Provinces in the 1920s Severo-vostok Rossii na rubezhe XIX- XXI vekov: vlast’ i obshchestvo (K 150-letiiu gubernatora Yakutskoi oblasti I. I. Krafta, Severo-vostok Rossii na rubezhe XIX- XXI vekov: vlast’ i obshchestvo (K 150-letiiu gubernatora Yakutskoi oblasti I. I. Krafta
Book
Grant S. Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s Routledge 9780415806954
Internet publication
Grant S. Russian Movement Culture and the Construction of the New Soviet Person Publisher Url
Engagement & Impact
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..