Dr. Anna Whittington

Biography

Anna Whittington is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the concepts of citizenship and inequality within Soviet Eurasia. Currently, she is working on an in-progress book manuscript titled "Repertoires of Citizenship: Inclusion, Inequality, and the Making of Soviet People" which explores the discourses and practices of Soviet citizenship from the October Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her work draws on multilingual legal documents, citizen letters, educational curricula, oral histories, and newspapers. Whittington's research emphasizes the active role citizens played in negotiating their identities and participation in citizenship against a backdrop of officially proclaimed equality alongside everyday inequalities influenced by factors such as race and gender. She has held several postdoctoral fellowships and was previously an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her ongoing projects include exploring the histories of enumeration in the Russian Empire and the grassroots conditions surrounding the Soviet collapse, supported by extensive archival research across more than 30 locations in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.

Research Interests

Experience