Danielle Leavitt-Quist

I am a History PhD candidate at Harvard University and a scholar of the Soviet Union and Modern Ukraine.  My research explores how Soviets thought about human age, from the Soviet Union’s birth to its death. I follow a group of Ukrainian scientists who researched the human lifespan, and I focus on the ways in which science, politics, and society came together to create dominant norms and perceptions of chronological age and lifespan over the course of the Soviet twentieth century. I argue that ideas about age mirrored the aging of the Soviet state and reflected both its visions of and fears for the future.

At Harvard I work with Serhii Plokhii. 

BA Brigham Young University (Russian, Women's/Gender Studies).