Dr Simon Huxtable

Overview

Biography

My research focuses on the history of mass media from the end of World War II to the present from a transnational and comparative perspective. My research has covered a wide range of subjects, from the history of the press in the post-war Soviet Union to television cultures during communism.

I am the author of a number of articles and book chapters, as well as the co-author of a monograph on the history of socialist television entitled From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television (2018). The book has been nominated for the Media and Democracy Karol Jakubowicz Award and received a commendation for best book from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

I served as an advisor for an exhibition entitled 'Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe', which took place at the Wende Museum in Los Angeles in 2019.

Administrative responsibilities

• Deputy Department Research and Ethics Officer

Visiting posts

• Summer Research Laboratory Associateship, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 06-2021 to 09-2021

Professional memberships

• British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies

• European Network for Cinema and Media Studies

Research

Research interests

• Media history
• Transnational history
• Modern European History
• History of the Soviet Union

Research overview

Monographs

Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable, From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Simon Huxtable, News from Moscow: The Rise and Fall of Thaw Journalism, 1945-1970, under contract with Oxford University Press

 

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Simon Huxtable and Sabina Mihelj, ‘Media Cultures, Socialist Modernity and the Communist Future: A Response’, Southeastern Europe (2021), forthcoming

Simon Huxtable, ‘Making News Soviet: Rethinking Journalistic Professionalism after Stalin, 1953-1970’, Contemporary European History, 27.1 (2018), 59-84

Simon Huxtable, ‘Remembering a Problematic Past: TV Mystics, Perestroika and the 1990s in Post-Soviet Media and Memory’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20.3 (2017), 307-323

Simon Huxtable, Sabina Mihelj, Sylwia Szostak, Alice Bardan, ‘Festive Television in the Socialist World: From Media Events to Media Holidays’, Journal of Popular Television, 5.1 (2017), 49-67

Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable, ‘Television and the Shaping of Transnational Memories: A Cold War History’, Image & Narrative, 18.1 (2017), 33-44

Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable, ‘The Challenge of Flow: State Socialist Television between Revolutionary Time and Everyday Time’, Media, Culture and Society, 38.3 (2016), 332-344

Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable, ‘The Politics of Privacy on State Socialist Television’, International Journal of Communication, 10 (2016), 2238-2257     

Simon Huxtable, 'The Problem of Personality on the Soviet Screen, 1950s-1960s', VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture, 3.5 (2014), 119-130

Simon Huxtable, ‘In Search of the Soviet Reader: The Kosygin Reforms, Sociology, and Changing Concepts of Soviet Society, 1964-1970’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 55.3-4 (2014), 623-642

 

Book Chapters

Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable, ‘Revolution as Memory: The ‘History Boom’ on Late Socialist Television’, in Media and the Cold War in the 1980s, ed. by Henrik Bastanien, Martin Klimke, Rolf Werenskjold (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2018)

Simon Huxtable, ‘Changing Professional Norms in Soviet Journalism after Khrushchev, 1964-1968’, in Reconsidering Stagnation: New Perspectives on the Brezhnev Era, ed. by Dina Fainberg and Artemy Kalinovsky (New York: Lexington Books, 2016), 21-42

Simon Huxtable, ‘Shortcomings: Soviet Journalists and the Changing Role of Press Criticism after the Twentieth Party Congress’, in De-Stalinisation Reconsidered: Persistence and Change in the Soviet Union, ed. by Thomas M. Bohm, Rayk Einax, Michel Abesser (Frankfurt-am-Main: Campus, 2014), 209-222

 

Review Articles

Simon Huxtable, ‘What was Socialist Television and What Came Next?’, European Journal of Communication, 33.1 (2018), 89-96

 

Blog Posts

Simon Huxtable, ‘A “Common Madness”: TV Psychics and Hypnosis in the Soviet Union’, Hidden Persuaders blog, Jan. 2018 

Supervision and teaching

Teaching

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Publications