Nikolay Koposov

Professor of the Practice

Member Of:
  • School of History and Sociology
Office Phone: (404) 894-1122
Office Location: 108 Old CE Building G24
Office Hours: by appointment
Related Links:
Email Address: nkoposov3@gatech.edu

Overview

Nikolay Koposov is a Distinguished Professor of the Practice in the School of History and Sociology and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, he worked at Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Helsinki University (Finland), and École des hautes études en sciences sociales (France). In 1998-2009, he was Founding Dean of Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture of Saint-Petersburg State University (Russia) and Bard College (New York). He specializes in modern European intellectual history, modern France, post-Soviet Russia, historiography, historical memory, and comparative politics of the past. He has authored six books including Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and De l’imagination historique (Éditions de l’ÉHÉSS, 2009), and edited four collective volumes and translations. His works have been published in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and other languages. His lectures were invited by Woodrow Wilson Center, Princeton University, Harvard University, Columbia University, Cornell University, George Washington University, the universities of Paris, Geneva, Strasbourg, Vienna, Tokyo, and Kyoto, Ewha University in Seoul, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ukrainian Catholic University in L’viv and other schools. He participated in expert groups on the politics of historical memory coordinated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights, and Körber Foundation (Germany).

Education:
  • Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy and History, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, 2001.
  • PhD (Candidate of Sciences) in History, Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) State University, Russia, 1980.
  • BA in History, Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) State University, Russia, 1977.
Awards and
Distinctions:
  • Short-term Visitor, University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, 2024
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2022
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2011
  • Research Director, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2009-2012
  • Charles Flint Kellogg Award in arts and letters from Bard College, 2009
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2004
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 2003
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 2001
  • Fellow, Collegium Budapest, 1997-1998
  • Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 1997
  • Visiting academic, Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte at Göttingen, 1996
  • Bourse Diderot, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1990-1991
  • Scholarship of the French Government, University of Paris-I, 1982-1983
Areas of
Expertise:
  • French History
  • Historical Memory And The Politics Of History
  • History Of Concepts
  • Modern European Intellectual History
  • Modern European Social History
  • Russian History

Interests

Teaching Interests:
I am firmly committed to the principles of liberal education with its student-centered character, emphasis on critical thinking, interactive teaching methodology, and attention to global issues in the contemporary world. I like teaching undergraduates. My courses at Georgia Tech include Europe since the Renaissance, Revolutionary Europe (from the French Revolution to the First World War), Europe in the Twentieth Century, Modern France, and Modern Russia.
Research Interests:
I am a European historian with a broad chronological and geographical focus and solid theoretical interests. My fields are intellectual (including conceptual) history, historiography, memory politics, and social history. Trained as a medievalist and early modernist (which in Soviet Russia, where I was born, was a form of internal emigration), I later moved to recent history and the study of present-day issues related to how the past is used in our societies. My work focuses mainly on France and Russia, but I have also studied some aspects of Byzantine, German, English, and Ukrainian history. In my research, I use theories and approaches borrowed from cognitive sciences (more precisely, theories of categorization and mental imagery), philosophy (critical philosophy of history and philosophy of mind), linguistics (theories of names), sociology (theories of social stratification, sociology of knowledge), and legal theory.
I have published six single-authored books and edited several volumes and translations. These books, along with numerous scholarly articles and journalistic essays, were originally written in English, French, and Russian. My works have been translated into German, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Romanian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. My most recent book, Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was the first monograph to cover the rapidly emerging interdisciplinary field of law and historical memory. My two current book projects are The Logic of Democracy: Universalism and Particularism in Modern Thought and The Soviet Collapse.
Research Fields:
  • Education Policy
  • Literary and Cultural Studies
Geographic
Focuses:
  • Europe
Issues:
  • Education
  • European Union Studies
  • Film History and Theory
  • Foreign Policy
  • Future of the Liberal Arts
  • Higher Education: Teaching and Learning
  • Historiography
  • History and Memory
  • History more generally
  • Intercultural Issues
  • Modernity
  • National Security
  • Philosophy
  • Politics
  • Post-Modernism
  • Religion and Politics
  • Social Movements

Courses

  • HTS-1031: Europe Since Renaissance
  • HTS-2036: Revolutionary Europe
  • HTS-2037: 20th Century Europe
  • HTS-3039: Modern France
  • HTS-3048: Modern Russian History
  • INTA-4803: Special Topics
  • LMC-3254: Film History
  • LMC-3257: Global Cinema

Publications

Recent Publications

Journal Articles

Chapters

All Publications

Books

Journal Articles

Chapters

Updated:  Feb 13th, 2026 at 3:50 PM