Gijs Kessler
Senior Researcher
- E-mail: gke@iisg.nl
- Department: Research Fellows
Gijs Kessler (1969) studied history at the Free University of Amsterdam (MA, 1994) and the European University Institute, Florence (PhD, 2001). Specialist in the social and economic history of Russia and the Soviet Union.
Gijs worked on short assignments for the IISH in Moscow during 1994 and 1995, and returned to the Institute in 2002 to lead two consecutive Dutch-Russian research projects in twentieth century Russian social and labour history. In 2010 he assumed the position of Senior Research Fellow at IISH.
Gijs is a participant in the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500-2000 and a founding member of the Electronic Repository of Russian Historical Statistics.
From 2002 till 2016 Gijs was based in Moscow. Next to his work for the IISH he taught Russian social and economic history at the New Economic School in Moscow, and was one of the founders of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Studies in History, Economy and Society (2004-2014). In 2022 he published ‘Rusland – land dat anders wil zijn’, a personal account of the twenty-five years of modern Russian history he witnessed first-hand.
current and past projects
- 2010-2020: Electronic Repository of Russian Historical Statistics
- 2017: Film ‘Building amidst solitude’ [dir. Pim Zwier]
- 2017: Russian Revolution at the IISH, 1917-2017
- 2012-2015: Exhibition ‘Together and Apart. The Urban Family in Russia in the Twentieth Century’
- 2005-2008: Social and Economic Agency and the Cultural Heritage of the Soviet Past.
- 2002-2006: Work, Income and the State in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000.
Publications: Gijs Kessler – Research output — Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
