Центр славянских и восточноевропейских исследований Университетского колледжа Лондона

London university department

The school was founded by Robert Seton Watson in 1915, as a department of King's College London, and inaugurated by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, later President of Czechoslovakia. In 1932 it became an independent institute of the University of London, but it merged with University College London in 1999.

More than 100 staff teach and conduct research in the history, economics, politics, sociology, anthropology, culture, literature and languages of the countries of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and Russia. In 2012/2013 the school had over 200 graduate students studying taught MA degrees or undertaking PhD research. The school also has over 600 undergraduate students.

Along with its undergraduate and graduate teaching, the school hosts several interdisciplinary research centres, groups and funded projects aimed at helping to expand research and understanding of its specialist regions. It analyses and disseminates information about changes in the region, publishing periodicals, papers and books, holding conferences, public lectures, seminars and briefings, and providing experts to act as advisers to governments, the media and institutions.

SSEES's first library was housed in King's College and staffed by a part time honorary librarian. In 1928 after the school moved to premises in Torrington Square books were housed by subject in various lecturers's rooms. The first full time librarian Sergei Yacobson was appointed in 1934 and he compiled the first catalogue of the library's stock. The library along with the school moved to new premises in Senate House in 1938 but during the war the library had to be left behind when SSEES was evacuated to Oxford and many books were damaged during an air raid. In the post war years the library expanded both in space occupied and staff employed. The library of some 357,000 volumes of books, pamphlets and periodicals is unique in the United Kingdom for the quantity of research material on open access and the extensive collection of regional newspapers. Its collections are consulted by scholars from all over the world. It has recently taken on a major role in providing electronic and audio visual material on its area of study. The library moved from Senate House to a new building in Taviton Street in 2005. The main fields of interest are the languages, literature, history, politics, economics, geography and bibliography of the countries it covers. Subsidiary fields are the arts in general, demography, ethnography and religion. Material is also collected on the former German Democratic Republic (history, political and economic life), the history of Germany and Austria, the Lusatian Sorbs, and Slavonic and Ugro Finnic studies in general. It houses the Bain Graffy Film Collection of films from and about Russia and Central and Eastern Europe.

In May 2004 the foundation stone of the school's new building on Taviton Street, Bloomsbury, was unveiled by the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, in the presence of The Princess Royal, Chancellor of the University of London. The school moved to the building in the summer of 2005 after almost 90 years at Senate House. Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, delivered the keynote address of his visit to the UK at a ceremony to open the building in October 2005. After Klaus's address, the Princess Royal unveiled a stone to mark the formal opening, on the occasion of the school's 90th anniversary. The building was designed by the architects Short and Associates. The design aims to be "environmentally friendly" not simply with solar panels, but by facilitating the draught of cool air round the building, to avoid a need for air conditioning or other energy using solutions – a first for the "central London heat island".