Dr Zoe Knox
Associate Professor of Modern Russian History
School/Department: School of History, Politics and International Relations
Telephone: +44 (0)116 252 2711
Email: zk15@leicester.ac.uk
Profile
Research
In recent years, these interests have coalesced around Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious minority group which has been at the forefront of discussions about religious freedom worldwide since its emergence in Pennsylvania in the 1870s. This has been particularly notable throughout the former Soviet bloc.
This research has led me to archives and specialist libraries in Australia, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA, and to collaborate with other researchers around the globe.
The European Academy of Religion awarded my second book Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World a special mention of excellence in the senior scholar category of the Giuseppe Alberigo Award.
Publications
(0) Zoe Knox & S. Rock, ‘Orthodox Pilgrimage in Eastern Europe: An Introduction’, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 4, no. 1 (2021), pp. 13-20.
Zoe Knox, ‘Russian Religious Life in the Soviet Era’ in R. Poole, G. Patterson & C. Emerson (eds), Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2020), pp. 60-75.
Zoe Knox & J. deGraffenried (eds), Voices of the Voiceless: Religion, Communism, and the Keston Archive (Baylor University Press: Waco, TX, 2019)
Zoe Knox, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World: From the 1870s to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2018)
Zoe Knox, ‘“A Greater Danger than a Division of the German Armyâ€: Bible Students and Opposition to War in World War I America’, Peace & Change, 44, no 2 (2019), pp. 207-243.
Zoe Knox, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses as Extremists: The Russian State, Religious Pluralism, and Human Rights’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 46 (2019), pp. 128-157.
Zoe Knox, ‘Jehovah's Witnesses as Un-Americans? Scriptural Injunctions, Civil Liberties, and Patriotism’, Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (November 2013), pp. 1081-1108.
Zoe Knox, ‘Preaching the Kingdom Message: The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Soviet Secularization’ in Catherine Wanner (ed.), State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 244-271.
Zoe Knox, ‘The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War: Interpretations of the End-Times, Superpower Conflict, and the Changing Geo-Political Order’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 4 (December 2011), pp. 1018-1049.
Zoe Knox, 'Writing Witness History: The Historiography of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania', Journal of Religious History 35, no. 2 (2011), pp. 157-180.
Zoe Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (Routledge: London, 2005; paperback 2009).
Supervision
(1st supervisor) M. Gillam, 'Anglo-Russian Relations, 1700-1725'
(1st supervisor) N. Siniari, 'A History of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's Mission to the Rastafari of the West Indies'
(2nd supervisor) A. Dell, 'The Eastern CDU in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the German Democratic Republic, 1945-53'
(2nd supervisor) J. Guo, 'Russia, China and the Urban History of Harbin'
My career highlights include working with the four PhD students that I have supervised to completion, all of whom have secured posts at universities or research institutes (in Israel, Germany, and the US).
I would be delighted to hear from potential MPhil or PhD students interested in religious tolerance and intolerance in the modern world; religion, state and society in Russia; religion and spirituality in the Soviet Union; or Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide.
I have extensive experience mentoring History PhD students on funding applications and can advise on opportunities in the Midlands as well as schemes at Leicester to support doctoral research.
Teaching
My teaching at Leicester has included a wide range of modules, at all year levels, on modern European history, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian history, religion in the USSR, and religious history more broadly. These range from an introductory course on Soviet history (ie. the second year Option module 'Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union') to a very detailed, primary-source based examination of religion in modern Russia (i.e. the year-long Special Subject 'Church, State and Belief in Soviet Russia, 1941-1991').
In addition, I have contributed to teaching on the History Master's programme in various ways, including sessions on archives and research methodology and a module entitled 'Religious Conflict and Coexistence', taught alongside early modernist and medievalist colleagues.
I have supervised undergraduate dissertations and MA dissertations across a broad range of subjects relating to late Imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia as well as the history of religion in modern Europe.