Christoph Witzenrath (Shklar Fellow, Fall 2010) is Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. His research project is “Slavery, Redemption, and Liberation in Ukraine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” While the opposition of Zaporozhian Cossacks to Polish bondage or tsarist oppression has often been studied, redemption from slavery and the multiple moral and practical political issues connected to it have received much less attention. Witzenrath hopes to investigate the relationship between liberty and slavery in Ukraine and the political implications for the empires bordering the Black Sea steppe. Witzenrath received his Ph.D. in 2005 from King’s College London. His recent publications include Cossacks and the Russian Empire, 1598–1725: Manipulation, Rebellion, and Expansion into Siberia (London, 2007) and “Literacy and Orality in the Eurasian Frontier: Imperial Culture and Space in Russia,” SEER 87 (2009); and a forthcoming monograph, Slavery, Ransom, and Liberation in Russia and the Steppe Area, 1500–2000 (2010).