Mirjam Voerkelius

Mirjam Voerkelius will use her fellowship at the MPIWG to complete her PhD in Late Modern European History at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research examines the conflicted history of Darwinism in twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union, a history spanning both sides of the revolutionary divide of 1917. She situates the story in an international context as the scientists, environmentalists, and popularizers of science she studies entertained conversations across borders. This continues an interest she first explored in an article “Russia and the Soviet Union at the World Fairs” in the volume Russia and the Soviet Union in a Global Perspective edited by Martin Aust (Frankfurt, 2013). Her doctoral research and writing have received generous support from UC Berkeley, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Doris G. Quinn Foundation. Mirjam has enjoyed the opportunity to teach both broad survey classes in European and world history as well as specialized classes on European and Russian history at the universities of Munich (LMU), Zurich, and at UC Berkeley.