Michael Hughes is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Russia,with a particular interest in the development of Russian conservative thought from 1815 down to the 1917 Revolution (particularly thinkers within the Slavophile tradition).  Much of his recent work has focused on Anglo-Russian relations, seeking to place formal diplomatic relations in the context of wider cultural exchange, while his current research project explores the development of transnational revolutionary networks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hughes also has a long-standing interest in the role of religion in international politics.

Michael Hughes carried out graduate work at the London School of Economics and was a British Council Scholar at Moscow University during the closing years of the Cold War.  Before coming to Lancaster in 2013 he held posts at Brunel University and Liverpool University (where he served as Head of Department).  He served as Head of the Department of History at Lancaster in 2015-18 and Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2018-20.  He was a member of the History Sub-Panel for the UK Government's 2021 Research Excellence Framework.  Hughes has held visiting fellowships at a number of American universities.  He was Council Member and Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society from 2010-2014 and Treasurer of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) from 2015-19.  He has broadcast widely on Russian history and politics on TV and Radio.  Hughes has published six monographs, along with a number of edited collections, and more than fifty journal articles and book chapters.

Michael Hughes has recently completed a biography of Archbishop Randall Davidson, who had a particular interest in Eastern Orthodoxy, and played a major role in shaping the Church of England's response to international political developments in the first quarter of the twentieth century.  He is currently writing a biography of the Russian revolutionary Feliks Volkhovskii, which is based on extensive archival research in Russia, Britain, the USA, the Netherlands and France.  Hughes is also co-editor of the international volumes of the 24 volume Russia's Great War and  Revolution series, which brings together essays from scholars around the world in a major reassessment of the significance of 1917 in world history. 

Michael Hughes currently teaches on the BA and MA programmes in the Department of History.