Michael Coates is a specialist in Soviet and Russian history, with a particular focus on the history of Soviet science and technology, intellectual history, and the history of knowledge. He is currently working on a book manuscript about the history of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia aimed to reconstruct all of human knowledge in accordance with the principles of the Marxist philosophies of dialectical and historical materialism, becoming one of the most authoritative sources of knowledge in the Soviet Union. As a part of this and other projects (including one on the Encyclopædia Britannica during the Cold War), Coates has conducted extensive archival research in Russia and the United States.

• Coates, Michael. “Encyclopedic Worldbuilding: Alexander Bogdanov and the Cognitive Creation of the New Man.” In The Art and Science of Making the New Man in Early 20th-Century Russia, edited by Nikolai Krementsov and Yvonne Howell, 27-44. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
• Coates, Michael [Kouts, M.]. “Istoricheskie vzgliady na entsiklopedistiku: istoriia sozdaniia Bol’shoi Sovetskoi Entsiklopedii” [“Historical Perspectives on Encyclopedistics: The History of the Creation of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia”]. In Sovremennaia rossiiskaia regional’naia entsiklopedistika: mesto i rol’ v obshchestve, perspektivy razvitiia [Contemporary Russian Regional Encyclopedistics: Its Place and Role in Society, Prospects for its Development], edited by U.G. Saitov, 19-25. Ufa: Bashkirskaia entsiklopediia, 2019.