Rosalind Polly Blakesley is Professor of Russian and European Art and a Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. She has served on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Hamilton Kerr Institute and Kettle’s Yard, and is now a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Samuel Courtauld Trust.

Polly focuses on the visual culture of imperial Russia and the Baltic region, with books including The Russian Canvas; The Arts and Crafts Movement; Russian Art and the West (co-editor); From Realism to the Silver Age (co-editor); and, most recently, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great, which was shortlisted for the Apollo Book of the Year Award. She has worked on exhibitions including An Imperial Collection at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; International Arts and Crafts at the V&A; and Russia and the Arts, which she curated at the National Portrait Gallery as part of a pioneering exchange with the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Awards include the Pushkin Medal and, for her book, The Russian Canvas, the Art Newspaper Russia Best Book Award and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize.