Dr Paula Chan

I am a historian of Stalinism, the Soviet borderlands, and Soviet Jewry, currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College (2023-2028). Methodologically, my research uses large bodies of documentation and digital tools to answer questions about the USSR that scholars have struggled to address when operating on a smaller scale. I received my PhD in Russian and Eastern European History from Georgetown University in 2023, and hold master's degrees in Russian Studies (Georgetown University, 2015) and library science (Pratt Institute, 2011). My work has appeared in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Journal of Illiberalism Studies. My most recent article, 'Patterns of Silence: French Witnesses of Nazi Crimes in Occupied Ukraine' (Journal of Contemporary History), won the 2021-2022 Best Article Prize from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. Prior to Georgetown, I worked as a digital archivist.

Research Interests

I leverage my background as a digital archivist to foreground the social history of information in the USSR. I am currently working on my first book manuscript, Eyes on the Ground: Soviet Investigations of the Nazi Occupation, which examines the Extraordinary State Commission created by Stalin’s government on 2 November 1942, to gather evidence of Axis war crimes. My second book project, tentatively titled 'Jewish Choices in Soviet Riga', focuses on survivors of Nazi and Soviet rule to analyze the consequences of regime upheaval for social cohesion. Other works in progress explore the Stalinist falsification of the Katyn massacre, the history of mass mobilized information in the USSR, and digital humanities for study of the Holocaust and the Soviet Union.