Dr ISMENE BROWN
Soviet Union historian
Education
University of Oxford, St Hugh’s College
– DPhil, 24 September 2021
– Thesis - ‘The only woman: the agency of gender in the career and memorialization of Soviet politician Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva’
– Supervisor - Professor Catriona Kelly, New College; examiners - Professor Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford), Professor Marsha Siefert (Central European University, Budapest).
University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies
– MA in Russian Studies, 26 August 2015
– Dissertation - 'Permitted dissent?: the evidence of Ekaterina Furtseva'.
Royal College of Music, London
– ARCM in piano, July 1976, studies in piano, singing and viola.
Research area
Biography of Soviet politician Ekaterina Furtseva in progress, Soviet cultural politics, Soviet-West arts exchanges, Khrushchev circle.
Languages
Russian and French reading.
Experience
Until 2016, career journalist, print and radio news, eventually specialising in arts, including 15+ years as the Daily Telegraph’s fulltime dance critic and reporter, 1993–2008, and dance obituarist to date; two years as The Spectator’s dance critic, 2014-2016; 12 years as the BBC Radio 2 Friday arts programme regular dance critic, among much other broadcasting about dance for radio and TV. (See home page for more information.)
I created and launched The Arts Desk, theartsdesk.com, the first all-digital daily publication for arts coverage, live from 9 September 2009 to date; board director, fulltime site manager, instructor, and dance editor 2009-2012; now associate theatre, music and dance writer.
Online - ismeneb.com, this cuttings and links archive of some 30 years of my dance writing, 1992 to date, including a blog translating Russian ballet news.
YouTube channel @balletlegendsinterviewed - my hour-long filmed interviews with dance stars Nina Ananiashvili, Adam Cooper, Tory Dobrin, Matz Skoog and Sarah Wildor, launched 2023.
Peer-reviewed articles
‘Ekaterina Furtseva and the Impresarios: The Golden Age of Soviet Arts Tours’, Slavonic and East European Review, Spring 2024 (forthcoming).
‘“She Saved Him”: The Unacknowledged Role of Ekaterina Furtseva in Nikita Khrushchev’s Defeat of the "Anti-Party Group" in 1957’, Europe-Asia Studies, Special issue 2025 (in progress).
Conferences
British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies 2024, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, April 2024
– Presented talk on Ekaterina Furtseva in Europe-Asia Studies panel: ‘Reconsidering the Political in Soviet History’, 7 April 2024.
British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies 2023, University of Glasgow, March-April 2023
– Presented talk: ‘The Unacknowledged Role of Ekaterina Furtseva in Khrushchev’s Defeat of the "Anti-Party Group" in 1957’, 1 April 2023.
Anglo-Russian Research Network, University of Exeter, July 2022
– Presented talk: ‘The Golden Age of Anglo-Soviet Arts Exchanges Re-examined’, 21 July 2022.
London Symphony Orchestra, ‘Getting it Right? New Music and Dance’ conference, LSO St Luke’s, 9 March 2016
– Chaired roundtable: ‘Thinking Ahead’, with panel of composer Michael Finnissy, BBC TV dance producer Bob Lockyer, Rambert music director Paul Hoskins, and Julia Carruthers, former director, Dublin Dance Festival.
Invited talks
FORM undergraduate training, Tbilisi, Georgia
– ‘Conversation with Ballerina Nina Ananiashvili: Ballet and Nationality’, State Opera and Ballet Theatre, Tbilisi - 29 March, 2024 (filmed for YouTube).
FORM undergraduate training, 'We Must Believe in Spring' programme, Tbilisi, Georgia
– ‘Researching a Dark Object: the Lost Woman of the Soviet Leadership’, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, Tbilisi - 6 October, 2023 (filmed for YouTube).
Panels
Birmingham Royal Ballet, ‘Jiří Kylián’s Ballets’, 14 October 2022
– Chaired Zoom discussion with BRB artistic director Carlos Acosta and others, about Kylián’s ballet Forgotten Land in BRB.
Sotheby’s Geneva, online presentation for auction of the ‘Spirit of the Rose’ diamond, 5 November 2020
– Chaired Zoom discussion about Nijinsky, the Ballets Russes, and their influence on jewellery, with former Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, English National Ballet ballerina and artistic director Tamara Rojo, and head of Sotheby’s Noble Jewels, Benoit Repellin.
Russian Culture House, ‘Shostakovich and Britten: the Impact of a Friendship on the Diplomacy of the Cold War’, 16 September 2019
– Chaired panel of Britten scholar Cameron Pyke, conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, and Shostakovich scholar Daniel Driscoll.
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, ‘Heaven is Shy of Earth: Julian Anderson at 50’, 20 October 2017
– Roundtable panel member in discussion of the composer’s music for dance.
Other publications
Article: ‘From Hellfire to Eternity: Robert le Diable and the Birth of Ballet’, Opera Magazine, March 2022.
Foreword to Michael Meylac, Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes: Stories from a Golden Age (translator Rosanna Kelly, from Mikhail B. Meilakh, Evterpa, ty? Khudozhestvennye zametki. Besedy s artistami russkoi emigratsii, Moscow, 2008), London: I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Article: 'The Year 2012-13, Dance’, in Whitaker’s Almanac 2014, London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Review: 'Kontakthof at the Barbican Centre', in Royd Climenhaga (ed.), The Pina Bausch Sourcebook, London: Routledge, 2012.
Awards
The Drum Online Media Awards 2012, ‘Best Specialist Site for Journalism’ - The Arts Desk, co-winner with The Economist. Emirates Stadium, London, 21 June 2012.