RESEARCH PROFILE

Research interests are in the study of post-Soviet Russian society especially youth cultural practice, drug use, migration and displacement, ethnic and national identity including Muslim identity and the rise of xenophobic sentiments.

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

• National Identity in Russia from 1961: Traditions and Deterritorialisation, AHRC, The Warwick-based element of the project brings a sociological dimension to the wider project and has been is designed to provide a snapshot of understandings and articulations of Russian national identity among young people in North West Russia in the first decade of the 21st century. In line with the key themes of ?tradition? and ?deterritorialisation? this sociological study focuses not on the geo-political aspect of national identity but upon the processes and mechanisms of the reproduction of family, regional and national history. We are concerned with what young people know about these histories, where, and from whom, they learn them, and how they interpret and re-articulate them. We are interested also in how these identities are ?layered? and whether, for example, regional and national identities sit comfortably together or are in tension with one another. We are interested in the degree to which those family, and individual, histories (in particular degrees of ?rootedness? or mobility) impact on articulations of identity. We are particularly concerned with the articulation of radical or extreme articulations of ?Russianness? and this part of the project will gauge the level of tolerance and promotion of (ethnically) exclusive versions of Russian identity (via survey) as well as provide some glimpses into how these views fit into wider youth cultural lives (via ethnographic case studies). We will also consider here the degree to which these extreme versions of ?Russianness? intersect and clash with state discourses of ?patriotism?., Project Start Date: 01/09/2007 Project End Date: 31/08/2010
• Situating Culture, with Dr Susan Reid, University of Sheffield, CEELBAS, A series of 3 linked workshops under the umbrella theme Situating Culture will bring together academics, artistic producers and commentators who share an understanding of music, art, performance etc in (post)socialist societies as a set of everyday cultural practices. The series will consist of the following three workshops (details of intellectual content below), each of which will run over two days in Warwick, Manchester and Sheffield, respectively between June 2009 and January 2010 (venues and exact dates to be confirmed): 1. Cultures of the Margins, University of Warwick. Organiser: Prof Hilary Pilkington 2. Home Culture, University of Sheffield. Organiser: Dr Susan E Reid 3. Deterritorialized Culture, University of Manchester. Organiser: Dr Rachel Platonov , Project Start Date: 01/05/2009 Project End Date: 31/12/2010
• Post-Socialist Punk: Beyond the Double Irony of Self-Abasement (Resubmission), AHRC, ?Post-socialist punk? is a historically and spatially comparative study of punk in Eastern Europe conducted by an international, collaborative team of researchers from the UK, Russia, Estonia and Croatia. The project aims to reassess the dominant understanding of punk in the West - as an aesthetic articulation of late capitalist social relations - based on the challenges posed by the socialist and post-socialist punk experience. By situating punk in a different political context, the reading of punk as subcultural resistance to dominant class relations is replaced by a more open question about the political significance of the transnormative cultural practices of punk in both socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe. The project is designed as a multi-sited ethnography including 5 fieldwork sites in post-socialist Europe ? in Russia, Croatia and (eastern)Germany - and a parallel West European case study (The Netherlands). A key output of the project is Rotten Beat - an electronic resource presenting high quality analysis and information about contemporary music scenes in Central, South Eastern and Eastern Europe as well as searchable archives of audio, textual and visual materials. This resource is due to go live in autumn 2009. , Project Start Date: 01/03/2009 Project End Date: 28/02/2013
  
  

  Further Research Projects

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Prof Hilary Pilkington, Omel'chenko, E; Garifzianova, A, (2010) Russia's Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives , Routledge
• Prof Hilary Pilkington (2010) 'No longer 'on parade': Style and the performance of skinhead in the Russian far north' Russian Review, The (0036-0341)
• Pilkington H, Popov, A, (2009) 'Understanding Neo-paganism in Russia: Religion? Ideology? Philosophy? Fantasy?' in Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and East-Central Europe, 253 - 304, Editors: C.Williams, E. Ramanauskaite, G.McKay, M.Goddard and N. Foxlee, Oxford: Peter Lang
• Pilkington, H. and Sharifullina, E. (2008) 'The mutual extraction industry: drug use and the normative structure of social capital in the Russian far north' International Journal of Drug Policy 20 (3), 251 - 260 (0955-3959) [article]
• Pilkington, H, Popov, A (2008) 'Cultural Production and Transmission of Ethnic Tolerance and Prejudice: Young People?s Narratives' Anthropology of East Europe Review 26 (1), 7 - 21 (1054-4720)

Further Publications

RECENT RESEARCH DEGREES SUPERVISED

• The Russian migration regime and migrants? experiences: the case of non-Russian nationals from former Soviet-republics Date of Completion: 2009
• Inadvertent Cosmopolitans: Armenian and Adyghean Youth in Southern Russia Date of Completion: 2008
• Bulgarian Youth Cultural Practice Between the Global and the Local Date of Completion: 2007
• School to work transitions in post-Soviet Russia Date of Completion: 2007
• Transnational Locals: The Cultural Production of Identity among Greeks in the Southern Russian Federation Date of Completion: 2006
• Women in management: Experiences from Eastern Germany and Russia Date of Completion: 2003
• Youth sociality and globalisation: An ethnographic study of young Koreans? mobile phone use Date of Completion: 2003
• Substance abuse and health promotion initiatives in post-Soviet Russia Date of Completion: 2002
• Global frameworks and local realities: A case study of resettlement policies for forced migrants in the Russian Federation Date of Completion: 2001
• Dealing with disability in Russia: Case study of a post-communist welfare system Date of Completion: 2001