Matthew Pauly

Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University
Professor Pauly is a historian of Russia & Eastern Europe. He holds interests in the histories of nationalism and national identity, childhood and youth, education, and human rights. At Michigan State, he is a core faculty member of the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and Peace and Justice Studies. He is an affiliate faculty member of the Jewish Studies Program, and a co-leader of the Childhood and Youth Studies Working Group.

Pauly is currently engaged on a book project entitled, “City of Children: Juvenile Poverty, Crime, and Salvation in Odessa, 1881–1940.” The book investigates the impulse of Odessa’s citizens and tsarist authorities to care for marginalized children at the turn of the twentieth century and the ways in which children’s welfare institutions and programs were simultaneously maintained and transformed under Soviet rule. He is the author of Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2014) as well as numerous articles, essays, and reviews on early Soviet nationalities policy and the intersection between national identity, education, and childhood in late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. He is a member of the editorial board of Problemy istoriï Ukraïny (Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).

Pauly has received fellowships and grants from the U.S. Scholar Fulbright Program, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS), Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies (CFUS), Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S.A (NTSh), and the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Program. Pauly was also a resident U. S. Department of State Fascell Fellow at the American Embassy in Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine.