From Agrarian Studies to Zoos: Professor Tracy McDonald Speaks about Her Interests
Tracy McDonald is a professor of Russian and Soviet History at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In 2011, her first book, Face to the Village: The Riazan Countryside Under Soviet Rule was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2011. Currently she is conducting research for a book titled Behind the Iron Bars: A History of Soviet Zoos. She presented a lecture ‘Saving Beauty: Moscow and Leningrad Zoos during the Second World War’ in the HSE, Moscow and kindly agreed to answer a few questions for the HSE news service.
Urban Activism as an Ideology
In July 2013, The HSE's Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning hosted its first summer school on promoting urban activism. The school was attended by international experts, including the architects Stefan Retich, professor at the University of Bremen, Janine Walter from Berlin, and Lukasz Pancewicz from Gdansk. We spoke to the organiser of the summer school, Dmitry Savkin, Deputy Dean of the Higher School of Urban Studies and Planning.