Ksenia Butuzova

Ksenia Butuzova is a final-year DPhil candidate in History, specialising in the cultural history of the Russian Empire and early Soviet Union. Her doctoral research, Rebuses in Russian Culture: from Spiritualism to Socialism, presents the first comprehensive history of picture riddles in Russia, tracing their transformation from spiritualist art to tools of Soviet propaganda.

Drawing on unpublished archival materials, her work brings to light the creators, networks, and audiences behind this hybrid genre, and shows how rebuses offered marginalised intellectuals—among them spiritualists, women, and provincial artists—a means of asserting creative and intellectual agency. Her research has been engaged with in both scholarly literature and public history, and integrates methods from art history, gender history, philology, and the history of print culture.

Ksenia’s publications include peer-reviewed articles, edited volumes, and public history projects. Ksenia was a co-convener of the Oxford Long Nineteenth Century Research Seminar in 2023–2024. She is a Hill Foundation Scholar and has received grants from SHERA, AWSS, and CamCREES, among others.

Selected Teaching 

• Alternative Spaces in Late Imperial Russian Print Culture (2025)
• European and World History 4: 1815–1914, Society, Nation, and Empire — Nationalism tutorial (2024)
• The Study and Memory of the History of Tsarist Russia during the Soviet Union (2023)

Supervisor: Professor Julia Mannherz