Irina
Sirotkina

Irina Sirotkina is a cultural historian specialising in the history of the human sciences and, lately, in what she terms, ‘movement culture’ including dance

Her first book, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930 (2002), was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association. More recently, she published (with Roger Smith), The Sixth Sense of the Avant-garde: Dance, Kinaesthesia and the Arts in Revolutionary Russia (2017).

She writes on the history of dance for adults and children: her last book, Why People Dance, is lavishly illustrated. As a practitioner, she does Musical Movement, a version of free dance born in early-twentieth century Russia under the influence of Isadora Duncan.