VeloNotte™

Sergey Nikitin-Rimsky, PhD.,

Associate Prof. 

 

Historian of cities, educational event producer. 

Author of four books about cultural history of Rome, Verona and Russia.

Creator and producer of public art and educational initiatives in Russia, Italy, UK and Germany

Creator of the “Red Tungsten”, an educational interactive promenade at Moscow’s Elektrozavod, based on archival documents.

“One of Moscow city’s top connoisseurs” (“The Moscow Times”).

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Author of more than 100 publications in Russian, English and Italian.

Author of papers delivered at more than 50 International congresses and conferences.

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EDUCATION

Graduate of the Department of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University (1999). Doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences (2004), Associate Professor (2010) assigned by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation (VAK RF). 

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TEACHING 

2016-2018 – Visiting Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of Verona University (Italy)

2014 – 2015 – lecturer in “Comparative Socio-urbanistics” at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) 

2010 – Landau Scholarship Guest Professor at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy); directing MasterLives Milano & producing short video essays about masterpieces of 20th Century [или Early Twentieth Century] architecture in Milan with students (presented later at the Moscow Architectural Biennial). 

2008 – 2014. Creating and lecturing a 2-year course “Concepts of the Visual Arts” and other various special courses at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (Department of Social sciences and Humanities). 

2011 – 2012. Creator and lecturer of course - “Concepts of Moscow urban history” at the Strelka Institute for Architecture and Design (Moscow)

2006 – 2009 creating and lecturing 5-year course on the History of the Arts at Moscow City Pedagogical University (Dept. of Arts and Design).

2004 – 2005 lecturer on “Toponymy of Post-Soviet capitals” - a special course for students of the Department of History in the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

2004 - Visiting Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages of the Roma III University.

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Lectures in Princeton University (2011),  Politecnico di Milano (2012), “La Sapienza” (2007), Roma Tre (2012), University of Genoa (2006), Roma III (2004) to name just a few. 

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MOSKULTPROG

Since 1997 he’s been curating MosKultProg (Moscow cultural walks), a non-profit independent project producing cultural walks, lectures, courses, publications, videos, experimenting with various interdisciplinary methods and medias. 

Circa 200 projects produced so far with Moskultprog in Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kiev and other cities.

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VELONOTTE

Founder and director of Velonotte International, a critically acclaimed series of the 33 state-of-the-art educational cultural bike tours, involving world-leading historians, architects, musicians and designers as speakers. 

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The Velonotte series of night grand tours has been featured in the New York Times and Bloomberg (USA), Domus and Abitare (Italy), the Evening Standard, and Time Out (UK), Zaman (Turkey) and all leading Russian newspapers and TV channels.

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Recent Velonotte productions include: Velonotte Bauhaus commissioned by the city of Berlin Kulturprojekt Berlin to celebrate 100 years of Bauhaus (2019), Velonotte Industrial in Ivanovo commissioned by the Tourism office of Ivanovo to celebrate 150’s anniversary of Ivanovo (2021). More than 8,000 people from all over the world joined the 7th edition of annual Moscow Velonotte in July 2013, that was dedicated to Vladimir Mayakovsky’s jubilee

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Other realisations include:

Velonotte Romeo in Verona (2017) 

Moscow Pushkin Velonotte (2014)

Kazan Academic Velonotte (2014) about Kazan university and its people, St.Petersburg’s Velomusica (2015) exploring the role of music in the history of St.Petersburg

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PRESS

Regular work as a consultant on Moscow and urban history for national and international media, including BBC, RAI (Italy), CNN, RTR, NTV, Kultura, RussiaToday, Vesti.

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MUSEUM PROJECTS & EXHIBITIONS:

 

Founder of the People’s Museum of Moscow’s Elektrozavod — the first great power plant of the Soviet Union (under construction)

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Curator of four exhibitions for Arch-Moscow international architecture fair, Moscow Architecture Biennale (2008, 2010, 2012) and for other institutions: 

“Velonotte at the Museum: 14 Cities of the Earth” in the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (2014, Moscow).

“Master lives Milano: life inside the masterpieces of the modern architecture”, a video project with students of the Politecnico of Milano, presented at the Moscow Biennale 2011.

“Ivan Leonidov No.2” at the the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture (Moscow, 2008).

  

ACADEMIA

Academic work focuses on concepts such as the phenomenon of “state propaganda”, “public buildings”, “state art” in different epochs of history, from the late Middle Ages to the post-totalitarian eras of Italy and the Soviet Union. 

Deep exploration over 20 years of the history of place and name changes in Russia and Italy in totalitarian and post-totalitarian times, including two bestselling books on this theme in Russian.

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BOOKS

“Verona and Garda” architecture guidebook (English) to be published by Dom Publisher (Berlin) in May 2022.

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”Strana Imen” (The Land of Names. In Russian: Страна имен. Как мы называем улицы, деревни и города в России), published by NLO (Moscow) in 2020, based on archival, field and library research of place name changes in Russia since Peter the Great til the present day.

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Author of book “Progulki po Rimu” (Walks in Rome. In Russian: Прогулки по Риму. Историко-топонимические исследования), published by “Vokrug Sveta” (Moscow, 2010) based on 10 years of field and archival research of the contemporary history of Rome.  

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One of the co-authors of the “Ivan Leonidov” book (Milan: Electa, 2009; a cura di Alessandro DeMagistris). 

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