is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Bristol’s School of Modern Languages. She completed her PhD, Deaf in the USSR: ‘Defect’ and the New Soviet Person (PhD diss., 2011) at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and was the recipient of a Scouloudi Fellowship (2009-10) and Past and Present Fellowship (2010-11) from the Institute of Historical Research. Her research interests include marginal communities in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, with particular reference to public space and identity creation. She is currently working on a monograph on deafness and disability in Soviet Russia. Her forthcoming publications include ‘“Speaking in the Language of Art”: Deaf Theatre and the Politics of Identity during Khrushchev’s Thaw’ in the Slavonic and East European Review