Irina Filatova

Short Biography

Irina Filatova, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Professor of the State University – High School of Economics in Moscow, received her education and degrees at Moscow State University in Russia. She worked there for nineteen years and finished her tenure in 1992 as Professor and Head of the Department of African Studies. Between 1992 and 2002 she was Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa. Professor Filatova specialises in African history and in the history of ties between Russia and South Africa. She is the author of three books, A History of Kenya, The Green Hills of Africa: Kenya's Colonial Peasantry and The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War (with Apollon Davidson). She has also authored dozens of articles and chapters in books and edited several books on African history and on the history of ties between Russia and Africa. A major work, The Communist International and South Africa: a Documentary History, of which she is one of the editors, was published by Frank Cass in London in 2003. Among her current research interests are race and ethnicity and the history of the communist movement in South Africa and its ties with the Soviet Union.