Dr Rory Finnin

Senior Lecturer at Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge

Share

Dr Rory Finnin is University Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the Founding Director of Cambridge Ukrainian Studies (2008-2018); former Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies (2014-18); and former Chair of the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) (2011-18).

Finnin received his PhD (with distinction) in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He also holds Certificates from the Harriman Institute and from the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. He is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Ukraine 1995-97) and a native of Cleveland, Ohio.

Finnin is also convener (with Dr Sander van der Linden in Social Psychology) of the University's Disinformation and Media Literacy Special Interest Group, a community of scholars and practitioners committed to advancing creative interventions against disinformation and ‘fake news’. The DML SIG is part of Cambridge's Trust and Technology Strategic Research Initiative.

In 2015 Finnin won a Teaching Award for Outstanding Lecturer from the Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU), the representative body for all students at the University.

Dr Finnin's primary research interest is the interplay of literature and national identity in Ukraine. He also studies Soviet Russian dissident literature, Turkish nationalist literature, and Crimean Tatar literature. His broader interests include solidarity studies, nationalism theory, human rights discourse, and problems of cultural memory in the region of the Black Sea. One of Finnin's current projects is a comparative study of the role of lyric poetry in the emergence of modern European nationalisms.