Emma Friedlander entered the History PhD program at Harvard University in 2020. Her dissertation is titled “The Soviet New Age: Alternative spirituality and the collapse of communism, 1975-2005.” This project examines the popular culture of alternative spirituality, alternative healing, and the paranormal that swept late Soviet and post-Soviet society. She studies this phenomenon as it emerged against the background of Eastern European spiritual tradition then subsumed to state atheism, in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
Emma is generally interested in the social, cultural, and gender history of the late and post-Soviet Union. Her research and training have been supported by the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, Title VIII, and Harvard grants.