UC Faculty Awards 2020: Willard Sunderland

Sunderland is lauded by colleagues as an engaging and passionate educator and superb writer, having written and edited several books and scores of other publications on Russian history.

His principal research interests are the history of the Russian Empire in the modern period. Experts in Sunderland’s field note that his scholarship has enhanced the study of Russian history through the vast research and dedication that he invests in his projects, whether by traversing Eurasia in search of rare historical sources or learning Russian and, most recently, Chinese to fully explore the complexities of the cultures and regions he is studying.

His first book, “Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe,” is an important and elegant work that examines the Russian colonization of the vast frontier north of the Black and Caspian seas over many centuries. 

His second book, the prize-winning “The Baron's Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution,” by contrast, focuses on the life of a single individual — the curious general Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, who for a brief moment during the Russian and Chinese revolutions took over Mongolia and envisioned rebuilding the long-lost empire of Genghis Khan.