Professor Basker's main research interests are in Russian Silver Age literature, Pushkin, and nineteenth-century poetry. He is an internationally renowned expert on the Acmeist poets Gumilev, Akhmatova and Mandelstam – many of whose texts were proscribed in Russia for much of the twentieth century – and has published widely on the writings of their predecessors and elder, Symbolist contemporaries.

He is one of the editors of the Russian Academy of Sciences ongoing ten-volume edition of Nikolai Gumilev, and has also edited English translations of works by Gumilev, Mandelstam and Pushkin. Recent research has included a lengthy study of the émigré poetry of Vladislav Khodasevich and investigations of Russian Symbolist prose fiction, and he is currently preparing a book on 'poetry and power' in the Russian context.

Professor Basker said: ‘It's a great honour to be appointed Dean of Arts at Bristol. I look forward to working with the many outstanding colleagues across our wide-ranging Faculty, to further the cause of the arts, humanities and modern languages in the fast-changing environment of HE and the wider world.’