Research area
Soviet politician Ekaterina Furtseva, Soviet cultural politics, Soviet-West arts exchanges, Khrushchev circle.
Peer-reviewed articles
‘“She Saved Him”: The Unacknowledged Role of Ekaterina Furtseva in Nikita Khrushchev’s Defeat of the “Anti-Party Group” in 1957’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 77, No. 10, 2025, pp. 1621-46.
‘Ekaterina Furtseva and the Impresarios: The Golden Age of Soviet Arts Tours’, Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 102, No. 2, April 2024, pp. 231-62.
Scholarship links
ORCID 0000-0002-9573-4933
Education
University of Oxford, St Hugh’s College
– DPhil, 24 September 2021
Thesis: ‘The only woman: the agency of gender in the career and memorialization of Soviet politician Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva’.
Supervisor: Prof. Catriona Kelly (New College). Examiners: Prof. Philip Ross Bullock (Wadham College), Prof. Marsha Siefert (Central European University, Budapest)
University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
– MA in Russian Studies, 26 August 2015
Royal College of Music, London
– ARCM in piano, July 1976, studies in piano, singing and viola.
Conferences
XI World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, University College London, July 2025
– Presented talk: ‘“Byzantine intrigue, protectionism, sycophancy and cabalism”: the legendary Soviet music tours 1960-74’, 23 July 2025.
British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies 2024, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, April 2024
– Presented talk on Ekaterina Furtseva in Europe-Asia Studies panel: ‘Reconsidering the Political in Soviet History’, 7 April 2024.
British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies 2023, University of Glasgow, March-April 2023
– Presented talk: ‘The Unacknowledged Role of Ekaterina Furtseva in Khrushchev’s Defeat of the "Anti-Party Group" in 1957’, 1 April 2023.
Anglo-Russian Research Network, University of Exeter, July 2022
– Presented talk: ‘The Golden Age of Anglo-Soviet Arts Exchanges Re-examined’, 21 July 2022.
Invited talks
FORM undergraduate training, Tbilisi, Georgia
– Conversation with Ballerina Nina Ananiashvili: Ballet and Nationality, State Opera and Ballet Theatre, Tbilisi - 29 March, 2024 (filmed for YouTube).
FORM undergraduate training, We Must Believe in Spring programme, Tbilisi, Georgia
– ‘Researching a Dark Object: the Lost Woman of the Soviet Leadership’, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, Tbilisi - 6 October, 2023 (filmed for YouTube).
Selected panels
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Jiří Kylián’s Ballets, 14 October 2022
– Chaired Zoom discussion with BRB artistic director Carlos Acosta and others, about Kylián’s ballet Forgotten Land in BRB.
Sotheby’s Geneva, online presentation for auction of the ‘Spirit of the Rose’ diamond, 5 November 2020
– Chaired Zoom discussion about Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes, and their influence on jewellery, with former Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, English National Ballet ballerina and artistic director Tamara Rojo, and head of Sotheby’s Noble Jewels, Benoit Repellin.
Russian Culture House, Shostakovich and Britten: the Impact of a Friendship on the Diplomacy of the Cold War, 16 September 2019
– Chaired panel of Britten scholar Cameron Pyke, conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, and Shostakovich scholar Daniel Driscoll.
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Heaven is Shy of Earth: Julian Anderson at 50, 20 October 2017
– Roundtable panel member in discussion of the composer Julian Anderson’s music for dance.
London Symphony Orchestra, Getting it Right? New Music and Dance conference, LSO St Luke’s, 9 March 2016
– Chaired roundtable: ‘Thinking Ahead’, with panel of composer Michael Finnissy, BBC TV dance producer Bob Lockyer, Rambert music director Paul Hoskins, and former Dublin Dance Festival director Julia Carruthers.
Dance's Question Time, for The Arts Desk, Riflemakers Gallery, Soho, 4 November 2011
– Produced and chaired public discussion of future for the dance art and industry, with Alistair Spalding (Sadler's Wells Theatre chief executive), Arlene Phillips (West End choreographer and TV judge), Caroline Miller (Dance UK director), Robert Noble (deputy MD Cameron Mackintosh Ltd and New Adventures co-director), Rosie Kay (choreographer), Tamara Rojo (Royal Ballet principal dancer) and Val Bourne (Dance Umbrella founder).
Other cited publications
Obituary: Violetta Elvin, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, June 2025.
Foreword to Michael Meylac, Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes: Stories from a Golden Age (translator Rosanna Kelly, from Mikhail B. Meilakh, Evterpa, ty? Khudozhestvennye zametki. Besedy s artistami russkoi emigratsii, Moscow, 2008), London: I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Article: 'The Year 2012-13, Dance’, in Whitaker’s Almanac 2014, London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Review: 'Kontakthof at the Barbican Centre', in Royd Climenhaga (ed.), The Pina Bausch Sourcebook, London: Routledge, 2012.
Corpus of dance and arts writing for the Sunday and Daily Telegraph 1992-2025, The Arts Desk 2009-2024, The Spectator 2014-16.
Career experience
Before I went up to Oxford in 2016, I was a news journalist in print and radio, eventually specialising in arts, including 15+ years as the Daily Telegraph’s fulltime dance critic and reporter, 1993–2008, and dance obituarist to 2024; two years as The Spectator’s dance critic, 2014-16; 12 years as the regular dance critic on BBC Radio 2's Friday night arts programme, among much other broadcasting about dance for radio and TV. (See home page for more information.) A selection of some 30 years of my dance writing is archived here on ismeneb.com, including a blog translating Russian ballet news 2013-16.
In 2009 I created and launched The Arts Desk, theartsdesk.com, the first all-digital daily publication for arts coverage, online from 9 September 2009 to date – please, support its overdue site renewal if you can. I was also site manager, board director, writers' technical instructor and dance editor 2009-2012; later associate theatre, music and dance writer. The Arts Desk won 'Best Specialist Site for Journalism' at The Drum Online Media Awards 2012, sharing honours with The Economist.
My YouTube channel @balletlegendsinterviewed – containing hour-long filmed interviews with dance stars Nina Ananiashvili, Adam Cooper, Tory Dobrin, Matz Skoog and Sarah Wildor – launched 2023.
Awards
The Drum Online Media Awards 2012, Emirates Stadium, London, 21 June 2012.
– ‘Best Specialist Site for Journalism’ - The Arts Desk, co-winner with The Economist.
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