About Dr. Beer...
Reader in Modern European History and a specialist on Russia.
Dr. Beer has published widely on the social and cultural history of the Russian Empire and has a particular interest in crime and punishment. His last book, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars (London: Allen Lane, 2016), won the 2017 Cundill History Prize (CundillPrize.com) and was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize, the Longman History Today Prize and the Pushkin House Book Prize. Dr Beer has written for The Guardian, History Today, BBC History, The Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. His current research project explores the “Emperor Hunt”, the revolutionary campaign from 1879 to 1881 to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. In his undergraduate teaching, Dr Beer offers focused courses on “The Russian Empire in the Age of Reform and Revolution”, “Stalinism” and “European Culture in the Fin de Siècle” in addition to survey courses on the history of Modern Europe. He welcomes applications from research students in Russian history, especially those interested in biopolitics, empire, law, punishment, violence and modernity.
Publications
“To a Dog, a Dog’s Death!”: Naïve Monarchism and Regicide in Imperial Russia, 1878–1884
Beer, D., 28 May 2021, In: Slavic Review. 80, 1, p. 112-132Article › peer-review
Civil Death, Radical Protest and the Theatre of Punishment in the Reign of Alexander II
Beer, D., 4 Feb 2020, In: Past and Present. 250, 1, p. 171-202Article › peer-review
The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars
Beer, D., 25 May 2017, Penguin.Book
Penal deportation to Siberia and the limits of state power, 1801-81
Beer, D., 29 Aug 2015, In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 16, 3, p. 621-650Article › peer-review
The Exile, the Patron, and the Pardon: the Voyage of the Dawn (1877) and the Politics of Punishment in an Age of Nationalism and Empire
Beer, D., Jan 2013, In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 14, 1, p. 5-30Article › peer-review
Decembrists, Rebels, and Martyrs in Siberian Exile: The “Zerentui Conspiracy” of 1828 and the Fashioning of a Revolutionary Genealogy
Beer, D., 2013, In: Slavic Review. 72, 3, p. 528-551Article › peer-review
Morality and Subjectivity, 1860s-1920s
Beer, D., 2013, Oxford Handbooks Online. Dixon, S. (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University PressChapter (peer-reviewed)
Renovating Russia: the Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880-1930
Beer, D., 12 Jun 2008, Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.Book
Blueprints for Change: the Human Sciences and the Coercive Transformation of Deviants in Russia, 1890-1930
Beer, D., 2007, In: Osiris. 22, 1, p. 26-47Article › peer-review
‘Microbes of the Mind’: Moral Contagion in Late Imperial Russia
Beer, D., 2007, In: Journal of Modern History. 79, p. 531-71Article › peer-review
The Morality of Terror: Contemporary Responses to Political Violence in Boris Savinkov’s Pale Horse (1909) and What Never Happened (1912)
Beer, D., 2007, In: Slavonic and East European Review. 85, 1, p. 25-46Article › peer-review
Origins, Modernity, and Resistance in the Historiography of Stalinism
Beer, D., 2005, In: Journal of Contemporary History. 40, 2, p. 363-379Article › peer-review
Russia in the Age of Reform and Revolution, 1880-1940
Beer, D., 2004, In: The Historical Journal. 47, 4, p. 1055-1067Article › peer-review
The Medicalization of Deviance in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1880-1905
Beer, D., 2004, In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 5, 3, p. 451-483Article › peer-review