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Prof Susan Grant

Humanities and Social Science

Faculty of Arts Professional and Social Studies

Email: S.Grant1@ljmu.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 231 3618

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I am a historian of the Soviet Union with an interest in the history of healthcare, ageing, and physical culture. My first book, 'Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s,' examined the construction of the New Soviet Person through an analysis of the ideology, propaganda, and practice of physical culture. My work situates Soviet healthcare within an international context. In 2017 I edited a book that examines comparative aspects of Soviet healthcare, titled 'Russian and Soviet Health Care from an International Perspective: Comparing Professions, Practice and Gender' (London: Palgrave Macmillan). With Dr James Ryan I co-edited a volume on Stalinism, 'Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism: Complexities, Contradictions, and Controversies' (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

My second book, 'Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022), examines the Soviet project through the prism of healthcare. I analyse the experiences of nurses and middle medical workers to show shifting attitudes to gender, class, and care in the USSR. Beginning with the origins of Russian nursing in the nineteenth century, I track the story of nurses through the major events in Soviet history to the end of the socialist experiment. I also place the history of Soviet nursing within the broader frame of international nursing and healthcare history. This book is Open Access thanks to LJMU. 'Soviet Nightingales' won the 2022 American Association for the History of Nursing Lavinia L. Dock Research Award.

In 2018 I received a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (Ref No: 209842/Z/17/Z) for the project 'Growing Old in the Soviet Union, 1945-1991'. The project analyses state approaches to ageing that include scientific research, healthcare policy, medical services, and mental health. It explores subjective aspects of ageing by examining the experience of growing old in the world's first socialist society, as well as the influence of gerontology in the Soviet Union and abroad. My current book project addresses the different health and welfare services available to older age people in the Soviet Union. This includes homes for old and disabled people, geriatric services, and voluntary networks. In 2022 I was awarded Wellcome Research Enrichment Public Engagement funding. As part of this award the 'Growing Old' team has collaborated with Taira Foo Choreography to capture their research through dance and engage with the public in the form of discussion and questionnaires.

Together with Dr Isaac McKean Scarborough, I co-edited 'Geriatrics and Ageing in the Soviet Union: Medical, Political and Social Contexts' (Bloomsbury Academic, February 2023). The book explores the practice of geriatrics, the science of gerontology, and the experience of growing old. The volume is Open Access thanks to the Wellcome Trust and LJMU. For more information about the project please visit www.sovietageing.com.

I welcome expressions of interest from those wishing to undertake a PhD on any of the above themes.

Academic appointments

Professor in Russian and Soviet History, Liverpool John Moores University, 2022 - present

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