Nick Baron

Nick completed a BA Joint Honours in History and Modern Languages (German) and an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. In 2001 he received his PhD in History from the University of Birmingham. His doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Prof. R.W. Davies and Dr. E.A. Rees, and funded by an ESRC Research Associateship and then ESRC Studentship, was titled 'Soviet Karelia, 1920-1937. A Study of Space and Power in Stalinist Russia'.

From 1999-2004, Nick was a Research Fellow (from 2002, Senior Research Fellow) at the University of Manchester on an AHRC project on post-First World War population displacements, under the direction of Prof. Peter Gatrell. Nick took up a post at the University of Nottingham in 2004.

His work has received funding from ESRC, AHRC, EPSRC, British Academy, European Commission and the Yeltsin Foundation.

Nick has published a monograph on early Soviet history and a research-based biography of a Northern Irish officer who fought in the Russian Civil War and was later active in Ulster politics (both of these have been published in Russian language editions). He has edited one volume of essays, co-edited four further volumes, and published numerous book chapters and articles in leading journals in areas studies, history and historical geography.

He has also participated in and directed several public engagement and knowledge transfer projects involving collaboration with schools, museums, libraries, galleries and community organisations. Nick has been a long-standing member of the AHRC and ESRC Peer Review Colleges and regularly serves as a reader for international journals and book publishers. He sits on the editorial board of several journals, including Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization.

Expertise Summary

Nick's research focuses on 20th century Russian/Soviet and East European political, cultural and social history and historical geography. His particular interests are (1) population histories (migration, displacement, diaspora and exile; the construction of national, ethnic and social identities; community cohesion and conflict; the politics of collective memory and the public use of history; forms of state population management and demographic intervention, e.g. strategies of classification, regulation and surveillance, 'biopolitics'; etc.); (2) spatial histories (frontiers, borders and boundaries; territorial planning, centre-periphery relations and regionalism; landscape and environment; city space, architecture and urban cultures; conceptions, perceptions and representations of space and place, e.g. cartography; etc.); (3) histories of visual culture, especially film and graphic arts and developments in digital media.

He has extensive experience of supervising PhD projects in these areas and welcomes enquiries regarding postgraduate research and funding.

For further details, see under 'Research' tab above.

Teaching Summary

Nick's third-year UG special subject Culture, Society and Politics in 20th Century Russia examines the significance and meanings of culture in the political and social development of modern Russia.… read more

Research Summary

Most of my work is concerned to explore historical processes of interaction among 'space', 'populations' and 'power'. My approach is interdisciplinary: I have drawn on methods and theoretical… read more

Recent Publications

BARON, N., ed., 2016. Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953: Ideologies, Identities, Experiences Brill. (In Press.)

BARON, N., 2016. Placing the Child in Twentieth Century History: Contexts and Framework. In: BARON, N., ed., Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953: Ideologies, Identities, Experiences Brill. 1-39 (In Press.)

BARON, N., 2016. Violence, Childhood and the State: New Perspectives on Political Practice and Social Experience in the Twentieth Century. In: BARON, N., ed., Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953: Ideologies, Identities, Experiences Brill. 273-285 (In Press.)

KAZNELSON, M. and BARON, N., 2016. Memories of Displacement: Loss and Reclamation of ‘Home/land’ in the Narratives of Soviet Child Deportees of the 1930s. In: BARON, N., ed., Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953: Ideologies, Identities, Experiences Brill. 97-130 (In Press.)

Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953

Ideologies, Identities, Experiences

By Nick Baron

edited by Nick Baron

Across Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, conflict and violence arising out of foreign and civil wars, occupation, revolutions, social and ethnic restructuring and racial persecution caused countless millions of children to be torn from their homes. Nurturing the Nation examines the powerful and tragic history of child displacement in this region and the efforts of states, international organizations and others to ‘re-place’ uprooted, and often orphaned, children. By analysing the causes, character and course of child displacement, and examining through first-person testimonies the children’s experiences and later memories, the chapters in this volume shed new light on twentieth-century nation-building and social engineering and the emergence of modern concepts and practices of statehood, children’s rights and humanitarianism.

Contributors are: Tomas Balkelis, Rachel Faircloth Green, Gabriel Finder, Michael Kaznelson, Aldis Purs, Karl D. Qualls, Elizabeth White, Tara Zahra

Biographical note

Nick Baron (MA, MPhil, Oxon.; PhD, Bham, 2001) is Associate Professor in History at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has published two books and numerous articles and chapters on twentieth century Russian and East European history and historical geography.

Readership

Advanced students and scholars of Russia and Eastern Europe and of twentieth-century history, and everyone interested in the history of childhood and youth, and the history of migration and refugees.

Table of contents

List of Figures List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Note on Archival References Abbreviations of Archives Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

1. Placing the Child in Twentieth Century History: Contexts and Framework

Nick Baron

2. Orphaned Testimonies: The Place of Displaced Children in Independent Latvia, 1918-26

Aldis Purs

3. Relief, Reconstruction and the Rights of the Child: The Case of Russian Displaced Children in Constantinople, 1920-22

Elizabeth White

4. Memories of Displacement: Loss and Reclamation of Home/land in the Narratives of Soviet Child Deportees of the 1930s

Michael Kaznelson and Nick Baron

5. From Hooligans to Disciplined Students: Displacement, Resettlement, and Role Modelling of Spanish Civil War Children in the Soviet Union, 1937-51

Karl D. Qualls

6. Making Kin out of Strangers: Soviet Adoption during and after the Second World War

Rachel Faircloth Green

7. Lost Children: Displaced Children between Nationalism and Internationalism after the Second World War

Tara Zahra

8. Child Survivors in Jewish Collective Memory in Poland after the Holocaust: The Case of Undzere Kinder

Gabriel Finder

9. Ethnicity, Identity and Imaginings of Home in the Memoirs of Lithuanian Child Deportees, 1941-53

Tomas Balkelis

10. Violence, Childhood and the State: New Perspectives on Political Practice and Social Experience in the Twentieth Century

Nick Baron

LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Soviet bezprizorniki. Newspaper cartoon, 1920s.

1.2 ‘The Ideal Child’. Newspaper cartoon, 1920s.

2.1. Aleksejs Gills.

2.2. Anna Brasmanis.

2.3. Jānis Čuilītis.

2.4. Voldemars Štrekmanis.

2.5. Aleksandrs Vaniševs.

2.6. Roberts Vetterbergs.

2.7. Gabriels Matrosovs.

2.8. Teodors Griķis.

8.1 Still from Undzere Kinder of a child

8.2 Still from Undzere Kinder of Chaim Preter

8.3 Photograph from the Stroop report of a roundup of Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising