About Us
This website started as a project of the Scotland-Russia Forum, an independent Scottish charity which tries to improve understanding of Russia and its neighbouring countries. Email info@findoutaboutrussia.co.uk with any comments or queries about this website, or info@scotlandrussiaforum.org to find out more about the work of the SRF.
These are the people who worked on the Find out about RUSSIA website:
These are the people who worked on the Find out about RUSSIA website:
Bryan Alexander wrote Peoples of the Russian North. Bryan is a British photographer & writer. In 1971 he used a Royal Society of Arts travel scholarship to visit North West Greenland where he lived in an Inuit community for four months. This was the beginning of a lifetime documenting the Arctic and its people. Bryan has spent a total of ten of the past 44 years living in isolated native camps and villages around the Arctic. Since 1993 Bryan has concentrated his work on the native peoples of the Russian North.
Over the years Bryan has carried out assignments for many of the World's leading magazines including, Time, GEO, Le Figaro, Smithsonian, Vogue, People, International Wildlife, and the Sunday Times.
Bryan lives in the Scottish Highlands where he and his wife Cherry run Arcticphoto.com the World's most comprehensive specialist photo archive on Polar Regions. Their work is an expanding record of these vast areas and the changes that have happened over more than four decades.
Ivan Bashkirov, Rodion Irodionov and Marina Bokshitskaya made the film of Russian children talking about Pushkin. Ivan is currently studying music and computing in London. He was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and has since lived in several cities including Saint-Petersburg and Edinburgh. Experiencing different cultures helped him to make sense of the world, by looking at it from different perspectives. This experience leads to understanding and defeats ignorance. This is why he thinks cultural exchange is so important. He is very excited to see this project developing. Rodion is an aspiring producer based in Saint-Petersburg. Since 2009 he has been involved with making short movies as an operator, director and screenwriter. His interests span far and wide: while still at university, he co-founded a 3D movie making company, and soon after graduating organised several popular science talks and exhibitions attracting some world class neuroscientists. Marina is a professional photographer based in St Petersburg.
Jenny Carr edits the Find Out About RUSSIA website and wrote the Russian language and Pushkin sections. Jenny studied Russian at St Andrews University and lived in Russia for two years as a student. That was when she first read Pushkin - and realised that being able to read his wonderful poems in the original Russian is a very good reason for learning that language. There are lots of other reasons too of course. Later Jenny taught Russian in schools and now she is one of the organisers of the Scotland-Russia Forum which tries to tell people in Scotland about Russia. She often visits primary schools with a "taster" lesson and wishes more schools would teach Russian.
Dr Ariane Galy wrote the History section. Ariane is a historian with a research background in Russian and Soviet history, and has made many trips to Russia. She is the founder of History Box, which provides independent historical research. You can read Ariane's history blog at www.historybox.net/blog and follow her on Twitter @DrHistoryBox.
Esther Harper wrote the Sport section. Esther studied Russian at university and has travelled in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe. Her most memorable journey was spending four weeks travelling along the trans-Siberian railway, from a city in the east of Russia called Vladivostok, to Moscow, stopping at lots of amazing places along the way and meeting some very interesting people. In 2014, Esther worked at the Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi which was a fantastic experience. When she’s not exploring Russia, Esther likes spending any spare time she has reading about it in travel books!
Dr Ken MacTaggart wrote the story of Gagarin and other space information for The first human in space pages. Ken is a technology consultant based in Scotland who has met and interviewed many Russian cosmonauts. He has followed the progress of Russia’s space programme since the 1960s and he writes about space for a variety of magazines, journals and newspapers.
Alisa Matyunina wrote and illustrated the Russian folk tales section. Alisa was born in St Petersburg and moved to Scotland before starting school. She is 15 and lives in Edinburgh and visits Russia in the summer where her grandparents live.
Agnes Ness wrote A Visit to the Ballet. Agnes studied dance in Edinburgh and Glasgow. One of her tutors was Catharine Marks who was a dancer and choreographer with the Russian dancer Lydia Kyasht. Agnes has worked in theatre and educational television. She has taught courses in French, Art History and Dance History for the City of Edinburgh Council and gives lectures in French Art for Franco-Scottish Societies around Scotland. She is currently teaching dance-related courses at Edinburgh’s Dance Base and for dance academies in the city.
Calum Rourke wrote The largest country and the Trans-Siberian. Calum studies Russian at Cambridge University, and has volunteered at the Scotland-Russia Forum since high school. He has a great interest in Russian literature and history, and loves that, no matter how much you know about Russia, there is always something new and exciting to learn!
Marta Wiejak wrote the section on Food and Drink. Marta is a 4th year Russian Studies student at the University of Edinburgh. She is a great fan of Russian pop-culture, cuisines of the world and modern literature.
Thanks also to:
- The Likhachev Foundation who awarded Jenny Carr a Fellowship in 2014, which enabled her to plan this website.
- The Pushkin Museum of St Petersburg for information on Pushkin. Visit them if you go to Russia!
- Robert Chandler, Peter France and Antony Wood for allowing us to use their translations of Pushkin's poems.
- Fedya and Katya for the recordings on the Russian language pages and for their drawings. And Sasha for her video recordings on Russian language / Useful words .
- All the children who took part in our competition in summer 2015, some of whose pictures are shown on Baba Yaga & the Firebird.
Images: All efforts have been made to include image copyright information where necessary on this site. However, in some cases tracing copyright information has not been possible. If you see an image for which you should be credited, please get in touch and we will happily do so.