Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Dr Keith Harringston

Assistant Professor in Twentieth Century European History

I am a historian of twentieth-century Europe, with a particular focus on the Soviet Union and its successor states. My research focuses on minority nationalism and the various separatist conflicts that emerged during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I am particularly interested in the role local actors play in mobilising their communities and stoking unrest. I am currently working on my first monograph, provisionally entitled Russia’s First Victim: Moscow, Moldova, and the Origins of the Transnistrian War. Before joining Trinity, I lectured at Dublin City University’s School of History and Geography and Maynooth University’s Department of History. During my PhD, which I conducted at Maynooth University, I was the recipient of multiple scholarships, including the National University of Ireland Travelling Studentship. I have also held visiting fellowships at the University of Tartu in Estonia and the Moldovan-based PLURAL Forum for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Select Publications

Articles/Chapters:

‘Mobilising the Masses: Explaining the Rapid Rise of Worker Activism in Transnistria in the Late 1980s’, in Comparative Southeast European Studies, 71 (2023), 517-545.
‘Support for Moldova’s Territorial Integrity in the Transnistrian Region from 1989 to 1992’, in Eugen Străuțiu (ed) The Armed Conflict of the Dniester Three Decades Later (Oxford, 2023).
‘Between Separation and Integration: Moldova’s Bulgarian Minority and the Collapse of the Soviet Union’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review (2023), 1–36.
Keith Harrington, Responses to the Challenges of Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union in Moldova’s Russian-Speaking Cities, in Plural (2022), 131-51.

Teaching

I teach on the survey course ‘War and Peace in Modern Europe, 1900-the Present’. I also teach a year long list 1 module on the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and its successor states, and a list 2 module on nationalism in modern Europe.