Events
Events organised by and related to the Princess Dashkova Centre.
Join us for a screening of Alexander Lungin's acclaimed 2019 film Great Poetry, followed by Q&A with Alexander Lungin

Nov 26 2019
-
Russian Film Week 2019: High Above
Join us for a screening of Oksana Karas's award-winning 2019 film High Above.

Inspired by Princess Dashkova who lived at the Palace of Holyroodhouse during the Enlightenment, a series of short talks explores culture and diplomacy in Britain and Russia during the reigns of Catherine the Great and George III. There are two opportunities to see medals presented to the University of Edinburgh by Dashkova on the occasion of her son Paul’s graduation from the university, on a tour at the university library's Special Collections. Pre-booking essential!

Sep 11 2019
-
Lecture by Dr Dmitry Fedosov
Dr Dmitry Fedosov joins us to talk about General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (1635-1699), Chief Advisor to Tsar Peter the Great, and his diary.
The Exhibition through Curators' Eyes: A Talk by the Curators Caroline de Guitaut and Stephen Patterson.
Samuel Greene (King's College London) and Graeme Robertson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will discuss their newly published book, Putin V. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019).
'From the Eurasian Steppes to the Atlantic Shores: Post-Soviet Migration to Portugal'. A free seminar by guest speakers Elena Bulakh and Antonio Eduardo Mendonca (University of Lisbon).
Join us for a special lecture by guest speaker Famil Ismailov, News Editor at BBC Russian Service.
The Erickson Lecture 2019 will be given by Dr. Andrew Monaghan, Director of Research on Russia & Northern European Defence & Security at the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre at Pembroke College.
The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre is delighted to host an international workshop on the theme of urban multilingualism in contemporary Moscow and Dushanbe.

A lecture by Professor Irina Sandomirskaja (Södertörn University, Sweden) at the invitation of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre.

Nov 30 2018
-
Russian Film Week Scotland: The Story of One Appointment
Renowned director Avdotya Smirnova's film based on real events involving Leo Tolstoy, about the complexity of choice and commitment to one’s ideals. Shown as part of our Russian Film Week Scotland

Nov 29 2018
-
Princess Dashkova, the Woman Who Shook the World
Experience the extraordinary life of Princess Ekaterina Dashkova in a costumed extravaganza of eighteenth-century gossip, politics, poetry, and music.

Alexander Shein's much-discussed film about Mayakovsky, shown as part of our Russian Film Week Scotland
Author Anastasia Strokina talks about the creative process, becoming an author, and using Northern and ecological themes in her writing, and awards prizes to the winners of the knigu.ru book competition. NB This event is in Russian.
Claire Shaw, Assistant Professor in the History of Modern Russia at the University of Warwick, explores the issue of miscommunication in Cold War politics by looking at Soviet participation in the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD).
Дорогие друзья, дети, преподаватели и родители!
В этом году фестиваль детского чтения Книгу.Ру приходит в Шотландию, и мы приглашаем всех на увлекательные встречи с детскими книгами и писателем-лауреатом Анастасией Строкиной, которые будут проходить в Эдинбургском Университете!
Nina Scherbak’s talk highlights stylistic patterns developed by the Silver age writers and shows how to convey those patterns to a mass media audience.
This talk by Victoria Fomina about the cult of new martyr Evgenii Rodionov, a soldier who was killed in Chechnya, explores how he has become a public symbol of patriotism and private moral exemplar.
Professor Ekaterina Protassova (University of Helsinki) will deliver the keynote lecture of a multilingualism symposium at the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre. The keynote lecture is open to the public.
Professor Alexander Etkind (Mikhail M. Bakhtin Professor of History of Russia-Europe Relations, European University Institute, Florence) presents his recent book Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt.
Professor Aneta Pavlenko (Center for Multilingualism, University of Oslo) explores multilingualism in Russia, starting from the age of Ivan III.
Dr Victoria Donovan (Dept of Russian, University of St Andrews) and Stefhan Caddick will be joined by composer Simon Gore to present "Enthusiasm", a work bringing alive the story of Welsh industrialist John Hughes and the mining town he founded in Ukraine, via music, image and discussion.
Meet Shamil Idiatullin, award-winning writer, author of Brezhnev City (2017) which received the Big Book Prize.

Mar 15 2018
-
Film screening: Evgenii Onegin (Vakhtangov Theatre)
You are warmly invited to a screening of Evgenii Onegin as adapted for the stage, filmed before a live audience from Moscow's venerable Vakhtangov Theatre.
An illustrated talk by Sheila Sim, translator and garden phorographer, jointly organised with the Scotland-Russia Forum.
From 19 to 23 February 2018, the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre hosts a series of lectures by scholars from the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Their visit to the University of Edinburgh takes place under the auspices of the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Scheme.
All lectures take place at the Dashkova Centre.
A book launch of Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry (Columbia University Press) with Peter France (University of Edinburgh)
A book launch with Professor Mary Buckley (Cambridge University)

Jan 18 2018
-
Food for thought? The lexis of gastronomy in Russia
Dashkova Centre Open Research Seminar with Dr Andrea Liebschner (Ural Federal State University, Ekaterinburg)

Nov 25 2017
-
Russian Film Week: The Seagull
Screening of a performance of Chekhov's famous play in Russian with English subtitles, in a Satirikon Arkady Raikin Russian State Theatre production

Nov 24 2017
-
Russian Film Week: Pagans (plus Q&A)
Pagans is a human drama and love story, shown in Russian with English subtitles as part of our Russian Film Week.

Nov 23 2017
-
Russian Film Week: All Will End Soon
All Will End Soon is an acclaimed film about the unexpected changes that seemingly straightforward personal encounters can have upon people's lives.

Nov 22 2017
-
Language and violence in Russian theatre and literature
A roundtable event with playwrights Mikhail and Viacheslav Durnenkov, arts producer and translator Maria Kroupnik and writer Irina Lukyanova

Nov 21 2017
-
Russian Film Week: Kharms
Ivan Bolotnikov's fascinating film about Daniil Kharms, shown as part of our Russian Film Week

Nov 02 2017
-
Russian music and poetry: An evening with Vera Pavlova
Contemporary Russian poet Vera Pavlova plays Tchaikovsky and reads from her work (in Russian, translation provided on screen)

Oct 24 2017
-
Artistic representations of history
A round table discussion with author Vladimir Sharov, film historian Peter Bagrov and theatre critic and practitioner Kristina Matvienko

Oct 12 2017
-
Neomedievalism as Social Project in Putin’s Russia
A talk by Dina Khapaeva (Georgia Tech)

Sep 18 2017
-
Ludmila Ulitskaya
The end of the novel? A literary conversation in Russian with the internationally renowned writer Ludmila Ulitskaya
The Princess Dashkova Centre is hosting a screening of the bold, experimental directorial debut of actor Evgenii Koriakovskii, a prolific Russian actor.

Jun 17 2017
-
From Russia with Cash: a talk with Roman Borisovich
Roman Borisovich, leading actor in Channel 4's "From Russia with Cash", will discuss the film and the perception of corruption in Russia and London.

Jun 16 2017
-
Russian Cultural Presence in London: a Snowball Effect
A talk by Alexander Kan, BBC World Service Arts and Culture Correspondent and a UK expert on contemporary Russian culture

An international 2-day workshop, part of the 'Global Russians: Transnational Russophone Networks in the UK' project (Cross-language Dynamics: Reshaping Communities OWRI)
Dr Ilya Kalinin (St Petersburg State University) talks about energy resources and the quest to use them to advance the socialist cause.
Dr Rogatchevskaia gives a virtual tour of this modern multi-media exhibition based on the research collections of the British Library. The talk will also explore the tension between telling the story and its visual representation and raise questions of contemporary curatorship of permanent and mainly text-based collections and temporary exhibitions.
This event is hosted by the Cross-Party Group on Russia, Scottish Parliament. In this panel discussion academics and professionals will examine the origin, transmission and promotion of narratives directed at the international community by Russia.

Mar 28 2017
-
An Evening in Conversation with Tatyana Tolstaya
On her visit to the University of Edinburgh, Tatyana Tolstaya will talk about her work, share memories of life under the Soviet regime, and take part in a question and answer session.

Mar 14 2017
-
Scotland-Russia Sonnets Exchange
Poets from Scotland and Russia unite to celebrate Shakespeare’s Sonnets as part of the UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature 2016 and global Shakespeare Lives programme.

Mar 09 2017
-
Ukraine, EU and Russia: the Shifting Boundaries of Order
In this lecture Kataryna Wolczuk will analyse EU-Ukraine relations by looking at different types of boundaries of order.

In this talk Dr Derek Averre will take a closer examination of recent international developments and analyse the opportunities and constraints Moscow faces in its foreign policy.

Jan 25 2017
-
Russian media and conspiracy theories
In this joint lecture with the School of Social and Political Science Dr Yablokov investigates the phenomenon of conspiracy theories and will demonstrate how journalists became one of the main drivers to their popularity in contemporary Russia.
The Dashkova Centre will host an international workshop to mark the 125th anniversary since Osip Mandestam’s birth.

An Evening with Nina Dashevskaya
Nina Dashevskaya, a writer and musician is a new name in Russian children’s literature and a multiple winner of the Kniguru award. She will read from her books and answer questions. Children are particularly welcome to this event!
“A Very Private Affair…” is a memoir of Speranza Howard (1903 – 95) who was born and brought up in pre-revolutionary Russia and escaped with her family, in 1920, to London. But it is also a story of the Russian writer Boris Pilniak, who visited Britain just once, but who claimed to have lost his heart for ever to a half- English girl he met in 1923.

Sep 24 2016
-
An evening with Film Director Ekaterina Eremenko
Screening of the film ‘The Discrete Charm of Geometry’ (2015) with the introduction and a Q&A session with the Director.
Alicia Kozameh will present a bilingual reading (Spanish and English) from one of her books, and will talk about fictionalization of her experience as a political prisoner, and as a political exile.
Professor Shakhnovich’s presentation will contextualize Semyon Desnitsky’s (1740-1789) activity in the early history of religious studies in Russia.
The Princess Dashkova Centre of the University of Edinburgh is pleased to invite you to attend a public lecture ‘The Russian Economy: Structural Problems and Perspectives on Economic Growth’, to be given by the Honorary Professor of the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures Alexei Kudrin.
This presentation by Professor Sergei Zenkin will explore four aspects of the formalist externalism – the formal, the mimetic, the nomothetic and the historical.

Mar 18 2016
-
Writing and Speaking from a Prison/Camp
A Roundtable event as part of the Language and Violence Research Stream.
Dr Andrea Gullotta (The University of Glasgow) presents a semiar titled: ‘Towards a New Understanding of the Gulag and of its Literature through the Prism of Auto-Biographical Studies’.
The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre is delighted to invite the scholar of art and film Mark Nash to present Calvert 22’s London-based exhibition "Things Fall Apart".
Yelena Khanga is coming to Edinburgh as part of a series of joint events between the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre and Calvert 22 Foundation, for a conversation about her life and career as a black journalist in the Soviet Union, the United States and modern Russia.
Poetry will always be a unified field. Your poems are not drawn from thin air. They come from other people’s verses and other people’s voices. You are a kaleidoscope of someone else’s lyrics. This must always be remembered. And be thankful, for without another, there would be no you.
The Russian Section (DELC, The University of Edinburgh) and Princess Dashkova Russian Centre are pleased to invite you to students’ performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Marriage Proposal (in Russian)
Using Guy Debord's concept of 'the spectacle', this talk analyses a collection of military news and entertainment videos, some which highlight contemporary tools and forces (Tupolev bombers over Europe, opolchentsy in Ukraine, bombing in Syria, Russian nuclear modernisation) and some which warn of the coming 'Third World War' started by the US and NATO.
In this seminar Prof Lähteenmäki will discuss language ideological discourse in contemporary Russia and its role in the promotion of national unity.
The Princess Daskova Russian Centre is pleased to host the Scottish writer and broadcaster Billy Kay who will present his new series “The Scots in Russia” produced for the BBC Radio Scotland.

Habitus in Revolutionary Times: Struggle of Social Dialects in a Russian Village, 1918
Prof Nakhimovsky (Colgate University) will investigate how class struggle and interpersonal relationships are represented in dialects of characters of Lydia Seifullina's novella ‘Перегной’ (Humus).
The acclaimed journalist Sergei Parkhomenko will be giving a lecture in Russian titled ‘The "Last address": how the idea of the public memorial becomes the basis to civil movement’
The workshop will explore tourist narratives as a product of cross-cultural interaction, and will address the questions: how globalization affects the narratives produced for and by Russian tourists and what meanings are attached to the newly emerged phenomenon of the Russian globe-trotter.