Jessica Werneke received her PhD in Modern European History from the University of Texas at Austin, with an emphasis on Visual and Cultural Studies in the Soviet Union. From 2016 to 2018 she was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences at the NRU Higher School of Economics in Moscow. She currently a Newton International Fellow of the British Academy specializing in Soviet photography.