Dr. Rob Babcock joined the Hastings College faculty in 1992. He teaches and oversees student research in all aspects of European history. He has taught Latin at Hastings College since 1996 and Russian since 2013. He has led student trips to Ireland and currently directs the College’s Irish Fellows Program. In 2017, he also became director of the Pushkin Institute for Russian Language and Culture at Hastings College.
A former Fulbright scholar, Babcock has published and presented on the Norman conquests of Wales and Ireland, and is currently engaged in two research projects: the environmental impact of the medieval conquest of Ireland, and a military history of the 17th century Cossack revolt by Stenka Razin against Peter the Great’s Father, the Tsar Alexei Mihailovich. He is on sabbatical leave for the academic year 2023-2024, during which he is beginning a new project: “Eating and Not Eating in Latvia: Food and Ideology in One of Europe’s Bloodlands.
Fields of interest include:
- European History (especially Medieval Europe)
- Welsh and Irish History
- Russian History
