Biography

I am a historian of international finance and globalization. I received my PhD from Harvard University in the autumn of 2013.
My dissertation, ‘Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution, 1892-1922’, traces the story of Western investors’ involvement in the Russian markets during the first modern age of globalization. Drawing on government and banking archives in Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, I tell the story of the investment boom that saw Russia become the largest net international debtor in the world by 1914 – a boom that ended in the greatest default in history, with Lenin’s repudiation of tsarist debts in 1918.
I trace this story from the perspective not only of investors, but also of the successive Russian and Western governments that sought to attract and regulate private capital flows. In the process, I engage with debates within economics and economic history about the drivers of capital flows in a globalized world, as well as with the historiography of the Russian Revolution.
I am more generally interested in the history of international banking and investment, financial crises, globalization, and the political economy of revolution. I also have an active interest in digital history and new research technologies and methods.
At Harvard, I served as a teaching fellow and head teaching fellow in undergraduate courses on economic, world, and diplomatic history.
Prior to graduate school, I spent several years working in investment banking in New York and Moscow, for J.P. Morgan and Troika Dialog.