Congratulations to recently-retired Charles, whose appointment follows 46 years of working for Imperial College London.

We are delighted to confirm that Professor Charles Drage has been appointed Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. Drage, known simply as 'Charles' among CLCC colleagues was responsible for the teaching of Russian at the College since 1977.

Professor Drage's Academic Biography

Educated at Eton, Professor Drage holds MA degrees from Oxford  and the University of London along with a PhD in Russian Language (University of London).  

Charles joined Imperial College London in the late 1970s to develop the provision of Russian language modules following in the footsteps of Dr Daniel Rutenberg from the Department of Electrical Engineering. Initially, Professor Drage worked only a few hours a week whilst teaching at the University of London's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES), where he had taught since the late 1950s.

On his retirement from SSEES in 1995, Prof Drage joined the Humanities Department (at that time called the Department of Associated Studies) at Imperial College London as Professor of Russian and Coordinator. As interest in Russian grew at Imperial over the years, Professor Drage was able to create four distinct Russian language levels. The Department of Associated Studies went on to become the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication (CLCC).

Charles' Work at CLCC

In the classroom, Professor Drage enjoyed an excellent rapport with students. Some years ago, in a student feedback form, one grateful student wrote: 'Professor Drage deserves a knighthood!' 

Alongside his teaching and coordinating duties, Charles continued with his research work, establishing himself as the authority on metrics in Russian poetry and reviewed numerous publications. Collaborations with colleagues included the translation of a volume on Buddhism by A Martya into Russian and he is presently in the finishing stages of a much-anticipated work on teaching Russian phonetics.  

Professor Drage supervised CLCC PhD students as well as helping fellow colleagues acquire supervision skills. His most recent supervision was joint with with Dr Mashail Ali for PhD thesis Subtitling Conflict-Related Gender-Based Violence Documentaries. Colleagues Charmian Brinson, Fliss Starr-Egger and Anna Ponomareva noted in his recent citation that Charles has been immensely generous with his time and advice, providing invaluable support not only to the Russian lecturers within his team but also to colleagues in other languages. 

Having established and developed the Russian provision here at CLCC and given the College and his students devoted service over all this time, we are thrilled that Charles' appointment has been confirmed and we look forward to keeping up with him in future.