Stella Ghervas

Biography

Stella Ghervas is Professor of History and the Eugen Weber Chair in Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined UCLA in 2023 from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, where she served as the Chair of Russian History. She has held teaching, research, and visiting positions in Australia, France, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Her research focuses on the intellectual and international history of modern Europe, with particular attention to peace and peacemaking, the circulation of ideas, and state-to-state relations. It spans several related areas: Europe’s engagement with the wider world; Russia and Eurasia, including maritime and oceanic studies; and the interplay of local, regional, and transnational dynamics.

She is the author or editor of six books, most notably Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte Alliance (2008), which won the Guizot Prize from the Académie Française; A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment (co-ed., 2020); and Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (2021), which was awarded the 2023 Laura Shannon Prize. She is currently completing a new book Calming the Waters: A New History of the Black Sea, and preparing an anthology of essential texts on peace from the Antiquity to the present day.

Explore her insights further in the Q&A, “Pondering Peace: A Q&A with Professor Stella Ghervas”.