Department of Russian

Russia today is increasingly influential on the world stage in terms of its politics, economics, art and culture. It is a nation with a rich artistic and intellectual heritage that includes great writers such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and notable thinkers like Herzen and Berdiaev. Knowledge of the mother tongue of over 150 million people, and the better understanding of history, people and culture which this ensures, have never been of greater importance to governments, businesses and private citizens.

The Department of Russian is a flourishing community with an intake of around 60 undergraduates each year. It is ranked sixth in the UK by the Complete University Guide 2013. With five permanent members of staff the Department has a proven track record of excellence in teaching and combines this with internationally recognised research in a range of fields including literature and thought from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. We are extremely proud of the calibre of our graduates who are sought out each year by a wide range of employers, including the civil service, financial institutions and NGOs, or who go on to further study.

The majority of our graduates begin their study of Russian here with no prior knowledge of the language, although students who already have a suitable pre-university qualification in Russian (A-Level, Scottish Higher, etc.) follow a separate course for the first two years, specifically tailored to their needs. We aim to combine modern 'communicative' methods with sound grammatical accuracy and a high level of oral aptitude, supplemented by the teaching of a wide range of modules dedicated to modern literature, intellectual history and contemporary Russian culture and society.

If you have read any of Charles Dickens's novels in Russian and would like to participate in a research project, please visit this website: http://russiandickens.wordpress.com/.