Georg Michels
Professor of History
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1991
(951) 827-1971 georg.michels@ucr.edu
Fields of Interest: Russian and East European history,
with an emphasis on relations between ethnic and confessional
groups.
After undergraduate studies at
the University of Goettingen in his native Germany, Georg Michels
first came to California as part of the EAP Exchange program.
He completed a Master's degree in Slavic Languages at UCLA,
then moved to Harvard for his doctoral work in Russian and East
Slavic history. After one-year interludes at St. Olaf College
and Appalachian State University, he is happy to return to Southern
California. Michels specializes in the history of religion and
dissent in the Slavic territories of the former Soviet Union.
His book manuscript, which he is revising for publication, explores
the phenomena of religious persecution and intolerance during
the early modern period. His articles on the Old Belief, which
is Russia's principal movement of dissent, and religious protests
in Ukraine and Karelia have been published in the U.S. and Germany
as well as in Russia. Michels received grants from the Social
Science Research Council and the National Endowment of the Humanities
to be co-director (with Professor Robert Nichols) of the first
international conference on the history of the Old Belief in
Fall, 1994.
