Juliane Fürst

Juliane Fürst is Professor of Modern History in the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University (CEU), Vienna, holding a joint appointment with the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (ZZF) in Potsdam, where she co-heads the department 'Communism and Society'. She has held academic positions in the UK, Germany, and Austria, with prior roles at the University of Bristol, St. John’s and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, and visiting fellowships at Harvard and CEU.

• BA (First Class) in Modern History, Christ Church, University of Oxford (1997)
• MSc in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, London School of Economics (1998)
• PhD in Government, LSE (2003), thesis: 'Stalin’s Last Generation - Youth, State and Komsomol 1945–1953'
• Habilitation, History Faculty, Humboldt University, Berlin (2020)

Her research focuses on Soviet and post-Soviet history, particularly youth culture, dissent, non-conformism, emotions, subjectivity, and grassroots movements. She explores how individuals and communities negotiated identity and resistance under late socialism, with special attention to Soviet hippies, perestroika from below, and public memory. Her work bridges cultural, social, and emotional history, analyzing how personal experience shaped political change.

The 15 most recent publications reflect a consistent focus on subcultures, emotional styles, and alternative lifestyles within the Soviet bloc. They span monographs, edited volumes, and journal articles, showing a strong engagement with transnational countercultural movements, generational identity, and the politics of memory. Her work reveals a thematic evolution from post-war youth socialization to the emotional and spatial dimensions of dissent in the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras.

Juliane Fürst leads several major research projects funded by Horizon Europe and the Leibniz Association, including Perestroika from Below, EUROPAST, and Legacies of Communism?. These initiatives involve international collaborations with institutions in Lithuania, Sweden, Luxembourg, and beyond. She has co-produced a documentary film and curated an exhibition on Soviet hippies, demonstrating a strong commitment to public history and knowledge dissemination.

She mentors a team of postdoctoral researchers and temporary fellows but no individual PhD or Master’s students are named in the provided texts. Her leadership roles include coordinating interdisciplinary networks and public history initiatives aimed at strengthening democratic engagement with the past in post-dictatorial societies.

She is actively involved in research labs and teams such as the 'Communism and Society' department at ZZF, the EUROPAST consortium, and the Perestroika from Below project team, which includes five core members and three temporary fellows. These collaborative structures support innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding late and post-communist transformations.