I fell in love with the peoples and cultures of northeastern Europe after I had the good fortune as a student to live and study for extended periods of time in Russia, Finland, and Estonia. It was my interest in languages perhaps that drew me towards learning how the differing linguistic and ethnic groups which in the past have shared these areas as their homeland both cooperated and struggled over the nature of their multiethnic societies.

In my teaching I try to show that the study of history is centered on a dynamic dialogue with the documents and artifacts the past has left us and with other historically-minded people as we search for the most fruitful approaches to understand past societies and eras.  This search I believe prepares us better to face current social issues and problems.  

Ph.D. Indiana University
M.A. Harvard University
B.A. Brigham Young University

Russland an der Ostsee: Imperiale Strategien der Macht und kulturelle Wahrnehmungsmuster (16. bis 20. Jahrhundert) / Russia on the Baltic:  Imperial Strategies of Power and Cultural Patterns of Perception (16^th-20^th Centuries), co-edited with Karsten Brüggemann.  (Cologne: Böhlau, forthcoming in 2012).

Vene impeerium ja Baltikum: venestus, rahvuslus ja moderniseerimine 19. sajandi teisel poolel ja 20. sajandi alguses [The Russian Empire and the Baltic: Russification, nationality and modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century]. Volumes I and II, co-edited with Tõnu Tannberg. (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2009 and 2010).

“Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim,” in Stephen M. Norris and Willard Sunderland, eds., Russia’s

People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming in 2012).

“Musical Life and National Identity in Tallinn, 1850-1914,” in Jörg Hackmann, ed., Vereinskultur und Zivilgesellschaft in Nordosteuropa. Regionale Spezifik und europäische Zusammenhänge / Associational Culture and Civil Society in North Eastern Europe. Regional Features and the European Context (Cologne: Böhlau, forthcoming in 2012).

“Multi-ethnicity and Estonian Tsarist State Officials in Estland Province, 1881-1914,” in Donald K. Rowney and Eugene Huskey, eds., Russian Bureaucracy and the State: Officialdom from Alexander III to Putin (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009).

“Kuidas kirjutada Tallinna ajalugu? Muusikaelu ja kodanikuühiskonna areng tsaariaegses

paljurahvuselises linnas” [How to write the history of Tallinn? Musical life and the development of civil society in a tsarist-era multiethnic city], Vikerkaar [Tallinn], 7/8, 2009. 

“Patterns of Civil Society in the Modernizing Multiethnic City: A German Town in the Russian Empire Becomes Estonian,” Ab Imperio: Theory and History of Nationalities and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 2, 2006.

“Administrative Reform and Social Policy in the Baltic Cities of the Russian Empire: Riga and Reval, 1870-1914,” Jahrbuch für europäische Verwaltungsgeschichte 16, 2004.