Samuel Proffitt Driver

Samuel Proffitt Driver is a scholar of Soviet and post-Soviet visual culture whose research examines the intersection of photography, visual manipulation, and knowledge formation from the Stalinist period to contemporary Russia. He completed his Ph.D. in Slavic Studies at Brown University in 2024, receiving the Dr. Pranas A. Sveikauskas Dissertation Award, and currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Dickinson College and a Regional Faculty Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanities Center.

Samuel has held numerous fellowships and Visiting Scholar positions across Europe, the United States, and Russia, including a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and appointments at Charles University (Prague), the Open Society Archives (Budapest), the Museum of Modern Art–Thessaloniki, and the Museum of Fine Arts–Houston. His work brings together approaches from art history, media theory, and cultural studies to understand photography’s role in truth-making, world-building, and visual information manipulation, including in Russia’s current information war in Ukraine.

Beyond academia, Samuel serves on the Executive Committee and as Co-Chair of the Information Working Group of the Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security (European Leadership Network), where he connects scholarship on visual culture with contemporary policy discussions. He is also an active Russian-English translator of non-fiction and poetry and maintains a parallel career as a professional musician.