Francesca Silano received her PhD in History from the University of Toronto. Silano conducts critical history of the Russian Orthodox Church, looking at how the Church understands its history and creates narratives about itself. Her postdoctoral project at the RSW focused on trials of members of various religious groups in the early 1920s as a window onto the Soviet legal system. As a post-doctoral fellow at RSW, Silano taught a course in the Religious Studies department, RELS A300: The Religions of Modern Russia, and organized the RSW conference "Religion & Revolution in Russia" at the IU Europe Gateway in Berlin in June 2018. Following her stay at RSW, she was a Teaching Fellow at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. Dr. Silano is starting a tenure-track position at Houghton College in fall 2020, teaching in the department of history & political science.

Francesca Silano
RSW Postdoctoral fellow, 2017-2018