Friends and colleagues, I'll be at MPSA this Friday through Sunday, and if you'd like to catch up, now is the perfect time! I'm leaving the US in June and have a strong suspicion that I won't be back for a while :-) If you'd like to grab a coffee or a beer, do let me know!

This is such an amazing conference and the most welcoming community. Please consider applying!

I'm very excited that you all can now read about Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire from 919-1519 in the @ajpseditor.bsky.social! Thank you @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social and Jørgen Møller for a great collaboration! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

On April 21, @nvasilenok.bsky.social (Stanford) will present "Reading Orwell in Moscow" and @sgehlbach.bsky.social (Chicago) and @eugenian.bsky.social (@liverpooluni.bsky.social) will discuss.

As I still haven't found a job (btw, I'm on the job market), I keep distracting myself by knitting. Meet my recreation of a historical pair of mittens from the northeastern part of East Prussia (today the most mesmerizing and most heartbreaking part of the Kaliningrad region, my home.)

Amid everything else, a brief note to announce the CFP for the 2026 Summer Workshop in the Economic History and Historical Political Economy of Eurasia. If you are an economist, historian, or political scientist working on Imperial Russia or the USSR, please consider applying. July 17–18, Paris.

Pregel

Happy to announce that I’ve just enticed my most amazing coauthor and great friend @timurnatkhov.bsky.social onto this platform! Please give Timur a follow!

First post on Blue Sky! Thought I’d start it with a thread laying out the chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy (the proofs are finally in!) The Handbook comes out in November