Dmitry Ismagilov

PhD Candidate

Contact details

dmitry.ismagilov@kcl.ac.uk

Biography

Dmitry is a PhD candidate doing research in historical political economy. His doctoral thesis considers the case of village governance in the Russian Empire after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. He constructed a new database of communal institutions based on analysing the records of communal regulations he collected during extensive archival work in Russia. He studies how peasants exploited legal opportunities to self-govern their affairs, the typology and characteristics of the institutions they used, and the role of the village self-governance in the agricultural development of the Russian Empire. Dmitry hopes that the insights from the past can inform modern debates about the importance of institutions and self-governance for development.

Dmitry earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Lomonosov Moscow State University, his Graduate Diploma in Economics from Lancaster University, and his MA in Political Economy from King’s College London. Before coming to the UK for post-graduate studies, Dmitry worked outside academia for three years, first as a financial analyst in a law firm and later in a bank.

Upon completing his PhD, Dmitry will join the Department of Anthropology at University College London as a postdoctoral research fellow to study the governance of finances in religious organisations.