Charlotte Alston

Charlotte’s research explores Russia's relations with the West across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on both international relations and transnational movements. She is the author of books and articles on Russia's revolutions and civil war, the Russian emigration, the post-First World War peace settlements, and the international influence of Tolstoy's thought.

Her first book, published in 2007, was a biography of the New Zealand journalist, publicist and linguist Harold Williams, who witnessed and reported on the Russian revolutions of 1917. The book explores the worlds of Anglo-Russian relations, wartime cultural diplomacy, early 20^th century international news reporting, and lobbying for intervention in Russia’s civil war.  Charlotte continues to publish on the Anglo-Russian alliance in wartime, and on international intervention in Russia’s civil war, with recent articles in War in History (2017), Russkii Sbornik (2020), and the multi-volume project Russia's Great War and Revolution (2021). With Geoff Swain, Michael Hickey, Boris Kolonitskii and Franziska Schedewie, she edited the 600-page Bloomsbury Handbook of the Russian Revolution (2023).

Charlotte’s second monograph was a study of the international Tolstoyan movement. The research for this book project was supported by grants from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Royal Irish Academy and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The resulting monograph Tolstoy and His Disciples: the History of a Radical International Movement (I B Tauris, 2014) examines the operation of international Tolstoyan networks and campaigns, as well as the ways in which Tolstoy’s ideas were developed in different national contexts. Her most recent publication on the Tolstoyan movement is a chapter in the Cambridge University Press volume Tolstoy in Context, edited by Anna A. Berman (2023).

With Daniel Laqua, Charlotte has edited two special issues of journals (Journal of Modern European History, and European History Review, 2014) focusing on transnational solidarities and humanitarianism, and a further two focusing on challenges to socialist rule in the 1970s and 80s (Labour History Review 2022, East Central Europe 2023). With philosophers Amber Carpenter (Singapore) and Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool), Charlotte led the British Academy-funded project ‘Portraits of Integrity’. Through a reading group and an international conference, this project focused on historical and fictional characters whose lives tell us something about the challenges of living with integrity. A volume of essays resulting from the project was published by Bloomsbury in the spring of 2020.

A further strand of Charlotte’s research focuses on the history of Russia’s border states in war and revolution. She has published both articles and a book (Antonius Piip, Zigfrids Meierovics and Augustinas Voldemaras: the Baltic States, in the Haus series 'Makers of the Modern World: The Peace Conferences of 1919-23 and their aftermath) on the representation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at the post-First World War peace conference in Paris, and in 2018 she took part in an international summer school to mark the centenary of the independence of Georgia.

Charlotte is currently working on a book project that explores the activity of generations of Russian emigre activists abroad, from the mid 19th century to the present. She is a member of the editorial board of the Royal Historical Society’s New Perspectives book series, and a member of the editorial board of the journals Revolutionary Russia and Labour History Review. From 2017 to 2021 was the Secretary of History UK, the national body promoting history in higher education. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Charlotte is Professor in History and Head of the Department of Humanities. 

Charlotte joined Northumbria University in 2009, having previously held posts as Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster (2006-9) and as Research Assistant to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London (2003-6).

Charlotte's research explores Russia's relations with the West, focusing on both international relations and transnational movements. She is the author of books and articles on Russia's revolutions and civil war, the Russian emigration, the post-First World War peace settlement, and the international influence of Tolstoy's thought.