Victoria E. Bonnell
Professor

Department of Sociology
410 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720

Telephone: 510-642-2784

Fax: 510-642-0659

Email: vbonnell@berkeley.edu

Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California at Berkeley

Chair, Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies

---

Victoria Bonnell studied as an undergraduate (B.A. Brandeis University) with Herbert Marcuse and in graduate school (Ph.D. Harvard University) with Barrington Moore, Jr. She approaches sociology from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on history, anthropology, literary theory, and political science. For the past twenty-five years, she has been deeply engaged with the cultural turn.

Professor Bonnell’s research has focused on the Russian experience in the twentieth century, viewed in a comparative European context. She has written on a range of topics: revolutions from above and below (1905 and 1917, the Stalin revolution of the 1930s, and the upheavals of 1991), collective and individual identities in transition, and the changing function and content of visual culture.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she turned her attention to contemporary topics, including the emergence of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial culture in post-communist Russia, the spread of extremist ideas and organizations, and in her most recent project, the symbols, rituals, and mythologies of the new Russian national identity. Along the way, she has also taken an interest in methodology—particularly the implications of the cultural turn and the contrasting discourses on methodology in historical/comparative research—and she has a long-standing fascination with the sociology of everyday life.

Professor Bonnell has chaired the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies since 1998 and served as director of the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies from 1994 to 2004.

© 2005 UC Berkeley - Department of Sociology
Contact Information | Computer Support & Webmaster