Dr Tamar Koplatadze

Before joining the University of Oxford as Associate Professor in Slavonic Studies, Dr Koplatadze was a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford on the subject of Postcolonial Literature from the Caucasus and Central Asia. She holds a BA in French and Russian from the University of Bristol, and an MA in French from King's College London.

Dr Koplatadze's specialism covers the literature and culture of Russia and the former Soviet world, with particular expertise in 19th century Russian literature and post-Soviet Russophone literature and film. She is currently completing a monograph on contemporary literature from Central Asia and the Caucasus, the first major study of its kind. Dr Koplatadze has travelled for fieldwork and cultural engagements in post-Soviet countries such as Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and made ongoing connections with local writers and creative artists. She has shared her research findings at various international conferences (Cambridge, Oxford, New York, Berlin, Lisbon) as well as public engagement platforms, such as The Calvert Journal and the BBC.

Dr Koplatadze’s research interests lie more broadly in postcolonial literature and theory, areas which she often connects to her research and teaching in Russophone Studies, such as in her award-winning article ‘Theorising Russian Postcolonial Studies’. She especially welcomes interests of supervision in any of these areas.

Teaching

Prelim tutorials on Russian Literature; Paper VIII (Russian and Russophone literature from the 19th C. to the present); Unseen (Russian-English translation).

Supervision: Particular interests include post-Soviet literature and film from Russia and the former Soviet world; topics exploring the interplay of empire, culture and gender; and the representation of adolescence in literature and film.

Awards and Distinctions

BASEES (British Association of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies) prize for best postgraduate article, 2021, for ‘Theorising Russian Postcolonial Studies’, Postcolonial Studies, 22.4(2019), 469-489 https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2019.1690762

Publications

'NGOs and Neocolonialism in Postcolonial Central Asian Literature: The Case of Central Asia', Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2021) https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2021.1972820

'Theorising Russian postcolonial studies’, Postcolonial Studies, 22.4 (2019), 469-489, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2019.1690762

'Salon de Variété’ (1881), English translation of Anton Chekhov’s short story, ACF Early Chekhov Translation Project. Forthcoming.

‘Mother Country: Meet the Women at The Forefront of New Georgian Cinema’, The Calvert Journal (March 2018) http://www.calvertjournal.com/contributors/show/9575/tamar-koplatadze

Media

You can hear Dr Koplatadze talk about her research on BBC Radio 4 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07fwpf6