Office Location: 3.39, Third Floor, Faculty of Arts Building

Email: jake.robertson@warwick.ac.uk

Website: jakeaustinrobertson.comLink opens in a new window

Office Hours: Tuesdays 11am to 1pm

Researcher & Storyteller

My years of experience as a professional theatermaker, historian and teacher have taught me that history is full of untold stories that can help us understand our shared human experience. I believe the performing arts have the potential to transform research into creative experiences that inspire and educate far beyond the classroom.

Teaching at Warwick

HI3J7 Socialist Bodies: Dreams and Realities of the Physical in Soviet Russia

Research Expertise

Russian & Soviet History; Stalinism; Gulag Studies; Theater Studies; “Peripheral” Histories; Creative Engagement with Research

My primary research focus has been the professional theater institutions in the Soviet Gulag camps, with a broader interest in art and authoritarianism as well as Russian/Soviet cultural colonization of the "periphery".

Academic Profile

Ph.D. Candidate in Medieval & Modern Languages (Slavonic), Oxford University (2025)

Clarendon Scholar of University College

Dissertation: "Stages of Captivity: Professional Theater in Gulag Capitals of Vorkuta and Magadan"

M.A. in Acting, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2016)

B.A. in Slavic Languages & Literatures, Princeton University (2015)

Teaching Experience

Undergraduate Lecturer in Modern Languages, Oxford (2024)

• "Gulag Worlds: Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and Life and Culture Behind and Beyond the Barbed Wire"

Summer Course Instructor, Worldview Scholar Programme (2023)

• "Russia from the Outside In: A Decolonial History of Repression, Expression & Empire"

Assistant Instructor, Princeton Global Seminar (2019)

• "Moscow: Culture, History, Politics"

Russian & English Language Tutor, ABC Languages, Carnegie Prep, Freelance (2018-Present)

Publications

Jake A. Robertson, “Tragedies & Triumphs: Culture and Power in the Gulag Operas of Vorkuta and Magadan” Chapter in Precarious Identities: Theatre of Refuge and Risk in Russia and East Central Europe(Co-Edited Volume, Iowa University Press, 2026)

Jake A. Robertson and D. T. Kozlova. “Khudozhestvennaia kul’tura GULAGa kak fenomen v amerikanskoi i rossiiskoi istoriografii”. Chapter in Sotsial'no-kul'turnye protsessy na territorii Komi kraia: Istoriia i sovremmennost' (Edited Volume, Syktyvkar, 2014)

Creative Work

Along with my research and teaching work, I am a professional theatermaker, voice actor, and drag performer, having written, produced and performed Off-Broadway, at Shakespeare's Globe and beyond. I am currently developing a play called Songbird, which dramatizes the life of repressed queer Soviet cabaret icon Vadim Kozin in the context of intensified efforts to criminalize queer people in contemporary Russia.

Pronouns: they/he