Presentation “Social inclusion of female ex-prisoners. Russian experience”, 51st ASEEES Annual Convention. 23-26.11.2019, San Francisco, USA

BY DR LARISA KANGASPURO

ASEEES Annual Convention is the biggest annual international conference of Russian research area. Dr Larisa Kangaspuro was the organiser of the panel section “Towards a brighter future! Social and legal adaptation in Russia” comprising of leading experts from the Nordic countries, England and the United States.

Archival fieldwork in the United States

Dr Larisa Kangaspuro worked in the archival section of the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco, November 9-16, 2019. The archival section of the museum has acquired unique historical materials, primarily related to the Russian post-revolutionary emigration, as well as pre-revolutionary Russia and the period of the civil war. Some authors of memoirs (mainly the memoirs of emigrants of the second wave and the correspondence of the 1920s-1930s) went through prisons of different regimes: the Red Army and White Army.

She also worked in the Bancroft Library on November 18-22, 2019. The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library at the University of California, Berkeley. One of the largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States. For political reasons, it is not easy to find documents on the history of the peoples from the USSR in the Russian archives. Especially about repressive activities directed against them. In particular, the library contains archival materials on the history of Siberia. It is generally known that Siberia was a place of hard labor and exile, both in imperial Russia and later.

Fieldwork planning workshop, Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki University 29.10.2019

Following on from the project launch workshop in February 2019, a detailed fieldwork-planning workshop took place on 29th October, 2019. The workshop was attended by all the members of the research team based in Helsinki, the people who will be leading the first phase of field-work in the Russian Federation and new recruits to the project.  Professor Pallot opened the workshop by a talk in which she revisited the project’s aims and explained developments since the project launch workshop. Newcomers to the project introduced themselves and discussed the contribution they would be making to the different stages of the project.  The main business of the workshop followed. This consisted of finalising the logistics and timetabling associated with the first round of interviews, which with the cooperation of the Urals Federal University will take place in Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the topics on the agenda were the methodology, recruitment of research participants, data management in the field, ethical guidelines to be followed.

Transdisciplinary / Historical research workshop “Politics of memory: Nordic experiences of dealing with historical legacies” , Copenhagen, Denmark

The workshop supported by ReNEW Excellence Hub “Re-Imagining Norden in an Evolving World” was held March 27, 2019  at the Copenhagen Business School. Dr Larisa Kangaspuro was invited. She gave the presentation “Behind Finnish prison`s “success story””. Larisa’s presentation discussed the historical basis how the Finnish penal model was developed in the 19th Century when the Grand Duchy of Finland was a part of the Russian Empire. She focused particularly on the questions, how did the unique conditions of that period of Finnish history positive affect the creation of a modern prison system and did Russian official and public debates influence the development of Finnish criminal justice.