Dr. Rebecca Friedman focuses on the history and culture of modern Russia. Her monograph Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Modern Russia: Time at Home (Bloomsbury, 2020) explores how, from the nostalgic landed estate with its backward gaze to the present-focused and efficient urban apartment to the utopian communal dreams of a Soviet future, the idea of time was deeply embedded in Russian domestic life.  

Her 2006 book on the history of masculinity in Russia --Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863 – examines behavior, loyalty and sociability among a generation of Russian university students that would reshape the Russian social and political landscape for decades to come. She edited (with Barbara Clements and Dan Healy) Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, which is the first volume in English to focus on the growing field of Russian masculinity studies.

She has also written about Russian childhood, the gendering of the Cadet Corps and European Identities. She edited (with Markus Thiel), European Identity and Culture: Narratives of Transnational Belonging (Routledge, 2012)