Georg Michels, a UCR professor of history, has received a $60,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, to support an upcoming book project.

The title of Michels’ accepted NEH proposal is “Protect Us Against the Cruelty… of Christian Monarchs: Ottoman Support for Ukrainian Resistance Against the Russian Empire (1660–1683).” The book addresses Ukrainians’ relations with Ottomans, Poles, and Russians during the 17th century, with an interest in the Ottoman Empire’s support of Ukrainian resistance against Russian military invasion and occupation. The book is set for publication in 2027 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Michels' application was one of only 7% of NEH fellowship applications accepted during a highly competitive cycle. There were 1,075 applications; 73 were funded.

“The research is grounded in extensive and diverse archival sources, and the author’s linguistic proficiency and methodological rigor are evident,” an NEH reviewer wrote in recommending the funding. “The project’s significance is underscored by its potential to reshape historical discourses on East European and Ottoman interactions and contribute to contemporary debates on national identity and historical memory in the region.”

Wrote another NEH reviewer: “The project … considers the character of Russian rule and oppression through the lens of rebellions by a range of ordinary Ukrainians against the everyday violence they or their families suffered. A fascinating and significant project by a prize-winning historian of great skill.”

Michels specializes in early modern Russian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian history. His 2021 book “The Habsburg Empire Under Siege: Ottoman Expansion and Hungarian Revolt in the Age of Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü (1661-76),” published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, won the 2021 Hans Rosenberg Prize awarded by the Central European History Society. The book reconstructs the Hungarian people’s uprisings against the violent Counter-Reformation, the Habsburg military occupation, and war taxes. It tells a dramatic story of religious violence, proxy wars, guerrilla warfare, refugee flight, and Christian-Muslim encounters.

His other books include “At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” published in 1999 by Stanford University Press. He was co-editor of “Russia’s Dissident Old Believers, 1650-1950.”

Michels received his Ph.D. in Early Modern Russian and East Slavic History from Harvard University in 1991.

During the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine war, he has drawn a connection  between Russian imperialism and Vladimir Putin’s political motivations.