My research interests are in the histories of modern Russia and China and in comparative Communism. I am writing a book on the 'politics of the supernatural' which compares the efforts of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union (1917-41) and the People’s Republic of China (1949-76) to eliminate 'superstition' from daily life, in areas such as popular religion, calendrical and life-cycle rituals, agriculture and folk medicine. It compares the ways in which ordinary people deployed religious and magical beliefs and practices as a way of dealing with and putting meaning on the turbulent and often traumatic changes that overtook their lives.
- Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 2012 to 2019)
- Professor of History, University of Oxford (from 2012)
- Professor of Comparative History, European University Institute, Florence (from 2008 to 2012)
- Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, and, finally, Professor, Department of History, University of Essex (from 1977 to 2008)
- Postgraduate at University of Birmingham (from 1973-1977) and at University of Moscow (1976-7) (from 1973 to 1977)
- Undergraduate, Oriel College, Oxford (from 1970 to 1973)
- History of modern Russia/Soviet Union
- History of modern China
- Comparative history
- The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
- (with Alan Knight), The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, Past and Present Supplement 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927 (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
- A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920–27 (Honolulu/Richmond, UK: Curzon Press/University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
- Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
- Member of the Editorial Boards for: Revolutionary Russia (1989–); Past and Present (1995–, editor 2009-14); Cultural and Social History (2004–); Antropologicheskii Forum (2005–); Twentieth Century Communism (2008–); Eurasian Review (Kookmin University, South Korea) (2008–); Ricerche Storiche (2009–), Ethnography (2009–); and Journal of Social History (2011–)
- Member of the Council of the Royal Historical Society (from 2006 to 2008)
- British Academy Research Leave Fellowship (from 2006 to 2008).
- Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Grant (from 2002 to 2007).