Dr. Sharon Kowalsky Awarded Fellowship to Conduct Research in Helsinki
Dr. Sharon Kowalsky, Associate Professor of History and Director of Gender Studies, has been selected as a visiting fellow for the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki for 2018-2019. She is one of only 16 scholars worldwide selected for this honor out of an applicant pool of more than 250.
“Each year, we aim to invite a diverse cohort of fellows in terms of research topics, disciplines and countries of study, combining these considerations with the criteria of academic excellence and the potential of a mutually beneficial research visit,” said Anna Korhonen, head of international affairs for the Institute.
Dr. Kowalsky plans to be in residence in Helsinki for one month in spring 2019 to conduct research on her manuscript, which focuses on domestic and interpersonal violence during the early twentieth century in Russia.
“I am very excited about the opportunity to conduct research in Helsinki and honored to have been selected for this prestigious fellowship,” Dr. Kowalsky said.
The fellowship will allow Dr. Kowalsky to access a rich collection of materials at the University of Helsinki. Most of the materials she intends to use – relating to laws and state administration in the last years of the Russian Imperial regime – are not available in Commerce, in Texas, or in the United States.
“The access to these materials that the fellowship provides will enable me to make significant progress toward the completion of my book manuscript, ‘The More You Beat Your Wife, the Tastier the Soup': Violence and the Family in Revolutionary Russia, 1900-1936,” Dr. Kowalsky said.
The Institute operates as a unit of the University of Helsinki Faculty of Arts. In addition, it has a special task of coordinating and organizing Finnish research and teaching in Russian and Eastern European Studies, as well as providing information services for the network of 12 Finnish universities active in the field. The Institute was founded in 1996 and affiliated with the University of Helsinki. It has grown into a multidisciplinary and multicultural community of 50 researchers and experts.