Rate My Professor Nikolay Veresov

Nikolay Veresov is Professor of cultural-historical psychology in the School of Educational Psychology and Counselling within the Faculty of Education at Monash University, a position he has held since November 2011. He earned his first PhD degree in Moscow in 1990 and his second PhD at the University of Oulu, Finland, in 1998. Veresov's early career included roles as a secondary school teacher from 1982 to 1987 and a daycare centre and kindergarten teacher from 1987 to 1991 in Russia. He advanced to senior lecturer in Murmansk, Russia, from 1991 to 1993, and then served as Head of the Department of Early Childhood there from 1993 to 1997. From 1999 to 2011, he worked as Senior Researcher and Scientific Director of international projects at the Kajaani Teacher Training Department in Finland. His expertise relates to UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Quality Education, and he is currently accepting PhD students.

Veresov's research specializations encompass child development in the early years, cultural-historical theory, and cultural-historical research methodology in early childhood education. He has authored five books, including Undiscovered Vygotsky: Etudes on the pre-history of cultural-historical psychology (1999), Resolving Conflicts in Collectives: Formula of Opposition (2012), Conversation Analysis and A Cultural-Historical Approach: Comparing Research Perspectives on Children’s Storytellings (2023, with A. Filipi and C. Davidson), Child Development Within Contexts: Cultural-Historical Research and Educational Practice (2024, with S. Kewalramani and J. Ma), and Диалоги о Выготском (2025, with N. Veraksa). Over 120 articles and book chapters by Veresov appear in ten languages, featuring highly cited works such as Perezhivanie as a Theoretical Concept for Researching Young Children’s Development (2016, with M. Fleer; 257 citations), The concept of perezhivanie in cultural-historical theory: Content and contexts (2017; 241 citations), and recent publications like Historical, theoretical and methodological foundations of CHAT: critical deliberations (2025) and Observing and assessing role play in early childhood: evaluation of the Play Matrix tool (2025, with N. Veraksa et al.). He has led projects funded by the Australian Research Council, including Building executive function in imaginary play (2015-2019), and collaborations with the Victorian Department of Education.