John Randolph is a specialist in Imperial Russian history, and is member of the History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte und Landeskunde at the University of Tübingen (Germany). His wife, Kim Curtis, is a fine art painter.
John’s first book was a biography of the Bakunins, a prominent Russian noble family, in the years 1780-1840. Currently, he is researching the life of Russia’s roads in the 18th century, and more specifically the elaborate horse-relay system–staffed by specially formed coach communities–that ferried people, things and information around the Empire, as its modern culture and society was fashioned.
