The people in the photo enjoy spending time reading through kilometres of documents produced by the secret services, trying to extract any trace of meaning from them. It was a great joy to co-organise a panel on preventative policing and repression in the USSR and Czechoslovakia at #ICCEES2025

Spent 4 days in London at a fantastic #DigitalHumanities & #RSE summer school hosted by @kingsdigitallab.bsky.social. Now stuck in a loop: 🔁 “I need to rewrite all my code!” 🔁 “Must try this new methodology!” 🔁 “Wait… thesis!!” PhD life in a nutshell😄 Thanks to all the organisers!

The topic of my thesis - the fate of "repeaters," or re-convicted political prisoners under Stalin - is becoming unexpectedly timely, as reports suggest Russian police have resumed this practice: theins.ru/obshestvo/28...

Spent a wonderful two weeks working with Soviet documents at the Hoover Archives. Heading home with 3.5 GB of copied materials, recharged by the sunshine and Stanford University's energy.