Molly Walker

Research Interests: History of science and medicine; modern Russian history; history of the Caucasus; Black Sea history; Georgian history; Soviet history; Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies; environmental history; history of empire; history of the body; science and race; postcolonial science studies; transnational histories of the 19th and 20th centuries; history of infectious diseases.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. Situated at the intersection of the Histories of Science and Medicine and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, my research shows that biomedicine is not only a tool of empire, but can also be taken up by those on the margins as a mechanism of resistance. Tentatively titled “There are Gods Here Too”: Malaria and Scientific Nationalism in the Caucasus, 1864–1937, my dissertation argues that malaria and its eradication became layered with political ambitions and were used by groups on the peripheries of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union to advance nationalist claims.

Previous Degrees:

B.A., History/French, Davidson College; 
A.M., History of Science, Harvard University;