Philippa Hetherington (1984–2022)

Abstract

Philippa Hetherington, Lecturer in Russian and Eurasian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (UCL), died of cancer at the age of 38 on 5 November 2022. Such an untimely death is unfathomably tragic, but in her years as a historian of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, Philippa was already able to contribute pathbreaking scholarship to our field and build a vibrant community of researchers and activists. As an Australian-born scholar who studied in the United States and wound up working in Britain, she traversed geographical and disciplinary boundaries in ways that seemed both effortless and necessary. In this memorial, we have tried to honor her legacy by writing a commemoration of her work together with members of this international community, recognizing her strength not just as a creative and original thinker but as a collaborator, colleague, and friend. Philippa’s main scholarly area of focus was the history of gender, sexuality, and international law in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her dissertation and first book project (currently being prepared for publication) dealt with the emergence of a transnational moral panic around “white slavery” aimed at restricting the international sex trafficking of women from the Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union, and the codification of this impulse into international law under pressure both from feminist activists and imperial officials in the 1910s and 1920s.1 A militant, committed feminist, Philippa nevertheless remained skeptical of the movement’s tendency—especially, but not exclusively, on the part of its liberal wing—to trust in the carceral state as a partner in the pursuit of gender equality and the protection of women’s rights. As her work