Rowan Dowling

My DPhil project examines the place of bisexuality in post-Soviet Russian cultural production and is jointly supervised by Prof. Philip Bullock and Prof. Dan Healey. This research provides new perspectives on Russian queer culture through an interdisciplinary analysis of diverse media (including literature, film, music and online content) in order to construct a composite image of how bisexuality has been treated since 1991. I am particularly interested in establishing the effect of the 2013 “anti-gay propaganda” law on these representations, investigating the blurring line between bisexual art and activism, and exploring how post-Soviet artists have drawn on Soviet influences to retrospectively document Soviet bisexuality in their work. My broader academic interests include queer/gender studies, depictions of mental health, life writing, and histories of repression and incarceration (particularly those of the Gulag). Alongside my OOC AHRC Studentship, I have been awarded a Clarendon Fund Scholarship and the Mr Michell Scholarship at Wadham College.