Mia Hanson

I am interested in gender and labor in the late Soviet Union. Prior to coming to Pitt, I completed a BA in History and Political Science at the University at Buffalo. My senior honors thesis, which discussed the liberatory promises of the Russian Revolution for women in Russia, was named the UB History Department’s Best Undergraduate Thesis of 2021. I completed an MA in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023, where I focused on Soviet women’s gender roles in the Khrushchev period. 
Since coming to Pittsburgh, I have begun researching the late Soviet period of Kazakhstan. In the summer of 2024, I conducted research in various state archives in the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, analyzing how occupational safety and Soviet ideas of gender roles impacted female-dominated industries in the USSR, specifically the Kazakh SSR’s textile industry.

Advisor: Alissa Klots