Mauricio Borrero

Mauricio Borrero received his Ph.D. in Russian History from Indiana University in 1992 and came to St. John’s two years later, after teaching at the University of Oregon. He was Chair of the History Department from 2002 to 2011. At St. John’s he teaches courses in Russian history, European history from 1815 to 1914, and modern world history with an emphasis on sport, food, and popular culture. He is the author of Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Urban Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1921 (2003) and Russia: a Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present (2004). His main research interests are three-fold and very loosely interconnected: the history of hunger, the social and cultural history of sport, and modern Colombian history, the latter as seen through the methodology of oral history. In addition to ongoing research on the history of hunger, he is currently working on several topics: a global history of sport, a biography of the renowned Soviet soccer goalkeeper, Lev Yashin, and, in a return to earlier work on food in Russian history, a study of Asian culinary influences on Russian foodways.