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This page describes the database form of the UTREES project, which originated with the print form of this title.

University Theses in Russian, Soviet, and East European Studies 1907–, or UTREES, is a bibliographical database of research in the British Isles. The database began in 2009 and has been continuously extended from the printed volume, most recently with 200 recent theses added in January 2023. The current editor is Olga Topol, who continues the work of Gregory Walker and J. S. G. Simmons.

• Lists details of over 6,500 doctoral and selected masters’ theses from British and Irish universities.
• Covers research relating to Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, and the area of the former USSR, including Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia.
• Subjects include art, crime, economics, energy, finance, gender studies, health, history, international relations, linguistics, human rights, literature, media, security, minorities, music, politics, religion, and society.
• Offers links to the full text of many theses.
• Search by keyword, author, subject, area, institution or date.
• Regularly updated.

License. Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0 UTREES by Gregory Walker; J. S. G. Simmons; Olga Topol; MHRA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.mhra.org.uk/Rights/index.html.

Access. Note that the UTREES bibliography runs on WIKINDX software that uses PHP sessions/cookies to store temporary data (for its navigation and environment). Personal information about users is not stored. Useful information about how to control/delete cookies though your browser can be found here. If you consent for cookies to be set, you may access UTREES online here.

The Resources menu then offers the ability to browse or search the database.

Omissions or corrections. The Editor is grateful to be notified of any omissions or corrections. Please email utrees@mhra.org.uk or Olga.Topol@bl.uk with details.

Overview. For an overview of UTREES and some of the historical and demographic conclusions which can be drawn from it, see: Walker, Gregory, ‘Doctoral Research in Russian and East European Studies: Trends and Realities from the UTREES Database’ (Cambridge: MHRA, 2017), published online at this website.

Eligible theses. This database gives information about doctoral and selected masters’ theses in Russian, Soviet and East European studies accepted by any British or Irish degree-awarding body. From the 2012 update onwards only doctoral theses have been added. It does not include any dissertations written for MA or other one-year masters’ degrees. B.Litts and B.Phils have been included where these were later made convertible to M.Litts and M.Phils.

Eligible subject matter. Theses are included if they deal wholly or substantially with any subject in the field of Russian, Soviet, Slavonic or East European studies broadly defined, including the social sciences as well as the humanities. Geographical coverage extends to Russia, the whole area of the former USSR (including Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia), and the area of the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe except the GDR.

Sources. The preferred source for the thesis details given in the database is either the catalogue record of the awarding institution’s library or their listing on the British Library’s EThOS database or by an institutional repository. For fewer than 2 per cent of entries, particulars have been compiled from other sources. In these cases the entry carries the annotation [NCR] (‘No Catalogue Record’).

Content of Entries.

• (a) Author’s Name. The spelling of the author’s name normally follows that of the preferred source (see ‘Sources’ above), although misspellings found there have been corrected. Diacritics in an author’s name are shown where they appear in the source or where their use elsewhere has been established, but not otherwise.
• (b) Title and Subtitle. Titles and subtitles are normally given in full as they appear in the preferred source, but a few very long ones have been abbreviated, indicated by […]. Diacritics have been added to non-English words (notably place and personal names) wherever they are standard in the original language. Transliterations from Cyrillic are shown as they appear in the source. Minor misspellings and typos have been corrected without indication. Where titles are uninformative, an expansion or explanatory note has been added where possible.
• (c) Awarding Body. The awarding body is given in the form (sometimes abbreviated) which was current at the date of the award. In particular, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies became part of University College London in 2000, so SSEES theses are ‘London (SSEES)’ up to 1999, and ‘London (UCL)’ thereafter.
• (d) Degree Awarded. The title of the degree awarded is given in the form current at the date of the award.
• (e) Date. The year given is the year shown on the thesis itself, where this can be established from the preferred source. It may therefore be earlier than the year of approval or award of the degree.

Abbreviations.

Access to British and Irish Theses. Under an agreement with the British Library, UTREES can now offer links to the full text and/or an abstract of many of the theses listed. The BL’s massive EThOS database aims to record doctoral theses from UK institutions in all subjects. Its coverage is already very extensive, especially for the last two decades, and is being continually expanded. Many, though not all, EThOS entries include an abstract of the thesis and the means to access its full text.

A high proportion of recent UK doctoral theses listed on UTREES also have EThOS records. All such entries since the 2008 update (over 4,500) now carry a link to EThOS.

To find the EThOS link from a UTREES entry, click on the magnifying-glass icon to see the full entry details. Any link to EThOS will appear under the heading ‘Further information may be found at:’ If no link to EThOS is shown in the UTREES entry, or if the EThOS record gives no access to the full text, you can still apply to EThOS for a search to be made. For details of this service, see http://ethos.bl.uk.

Alternatively, you may be able to get access through the home institution’s own online research repository, by applying for an inter-library loan, or by making a personal visit.

This will also be the case for all UK masters’ theses, and for all theses from institutions in the Irish Republic, none of which are recorded by EThOS.

You are usually allowed to make reasonable quotations from a thesis if you give proper acknowledgement, but more extensive copying is not permitted without the consent of the copyright holder (usually either the author or the home institution). Further restrictions may apply, such as an embargo on access for a stated number of years.

Acknowledgements.

• To the late John S. G. Simmons for the compilation of the first thesis bibliography in this field, published in Oxford Slavonic Papers in 1967 with quinquennial supplements in 1973, 1977 and 1982; and to Mr Godfrey B. Simmons for permission to make use of his late brother’s lists.
• To Dr Gregory Walker for permission to make use of the quinquennial lists compiled by him and published in Oxford Slavonic Papers in 1987, 1994 and 1998.
• To the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, for permission to use the 1997-2001 quinquennial list compiled by Dr Walker and published in The Slavonic and East European Review in 2004.
• To the many staff members of university departments and libraries who have answered queries and offered advice.

This database, like the earlier printed bibliographies from which it is partly derived, is indebted to the catalogues of many university and national libraries, and to the Index to Theses (formerly Aslib Index to Theses), and more recently to the British Library’s EThOS database.

Picture credit. The above photograph of a 350 year-old yew tree is used by courtesy of Giorgos Vintzileos, and can be found on Flickr here.