Dashkova Centre

Professor Luke March

A Professor in Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Director of Undergraduate Teaching for Politics and International Relations at the University, Luke March is the current Deputy Director of the Dashkova Centre.

Professor Luke March

Deputy Director

  • Princess Dashkova Russian Centre
  • University of Edinburgh

Contact details

Luke joined Politics and International Relations in 1999 from Birmingham University, where he finished his PhD and held a temporary post as lecturer in Russian Politics. He spent much of the late 1990s working on the communist left in the former USSR, in particular its ideological and organisational development and influence on democratisation.

This research led to several publications including The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia, which received a five-star review from Political Studies. His next book, Radical Left Parties in Contemporary Europehas been submitted to Routledge, and is expected to be published in late 2010. He is also working with Richard Dunphy of Dundee University on The European Left Party: A Case Study in Transnational Party Building (Manchester University Press, 2011).

Research

Luke is currently working on the radical left in Europe and Russia, left-wing populism, and radicalisation and violence in Russia (with Roland Dannreuther) as part of an ESRC research project which concluded in December 2009. His main foci at the moment are research on the European Left Party with Richard Dunphy, Russian nationalism and foreign policy and Russian party politics.

Luke has membership in the following Research Groups: Public Opinion,Parties and Elections, International Politics. His research interests include:

  • Russian and Moldovan politics
  • Soviet and post-Soviet politics
  • The radical left in Europe
  • Democratisation (specifically political parties, electoral politics and institution-building)
  • Communism and Russian nationalism

Luke welcomes applications from students considering research in the fields of post-Soviet politics (especially, but not exclusively, Russia and Moldova), populism, the politics of the left and democratisation.

Recent Publications

  • 2010. (ed. with Roland Dannreuther), Russia and Islam: State, society and radicalism (Routledge)
  • 2009. Managing opposition in a hybrid regime: Just Russia and parastatal opposition, Slavic Review, 68:3, Fall 2009, pp. 504-527
  • 2009. Moldova, in D.J. Sagar (ed.), Political Parties of the World (7th edition) (John Harper Publishing), pp.394-7.
  • 2008. Contemporary Far left parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream (Bonn/Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung)

For a full publication list and current teaching and research activity please see: