History Professor Named McCandless Scholar

Dr. Russell Martin, associate professor of history at Westminster College, has been named McCandless Scholar for the 2003-2004 academic year.

The award, designed to honor the memory of Dr. J. Bardarah McCandless and to encourage scholarly activity on Westminster's campus, is given to one full-time tenure track faculty member each year. The McCandless Scholar receives eight credit hours of reassigned time and monetary support for research and scholarship expenses.

Martin will use the time and money provided by the McCandless Award to travel to Moscow this spring to research original documents at the Archive of Ancient Acts. With this research complete, Martin will complete his work on his new book, Royal Weddings I Muscovy: 1498-1680, which will serve as a critical and diplomatic edition of the documents describing royal weddings in Russia from 1498 to 1680.

Martin appeared on A&E Biography in a broadcast on Ivan the Terrible as an expert on the controversial ruler, and has been an expert witness in a Canadian civil trial about the Russian royal family. He is the co-founder of the Muscovite Biographical Database, a Russian-American computerized register based in Moscow of early modern Russian notables. The Neville Island, Pa. native is not only fluent in Russian, but also reads Old Church Slavonic/Russian, French, German, Latin, and Polish.

Martin, who has been with Westminster College since 1996, earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and his master's and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

For more information, contact Martin at (724) 946-6254 or e-mail martinre@westminster.edu.