Supervisor: Dr Maximilian Sternberg
Research overview:
Ekaterina’s research interests include post-socialist urbanism, domestic life and legacy in Soviet housing, and the anthropology of time. Her current research focuses on urban change, displacement and demolition in Moscow’s five-storey Soviet-era housing stock, colloquially known as ‘khrushchevki’. Her work questions how the material, discursive and aesthetic constructions of the Renovation program have influenced how khrushchevki residents have begun to relate to their homes in the wider urban context since the program was announced. Employing a variety of ethnographic methods in a district set for demolition, she examines how khrushchevki residents experience the temporal registers of waiting to remain in, or part with, said landscape. The dissertation’s particular focus on life in standardised housing builds on the work of other urbanists, critical geographers and anthropologists from the CEE region that seek to address Cold War biases and misrepresentations of (post)socialist urban landscapes. By exploring the ways in which Moscow’s khrushchevki have grown to become arenas of generative ambiguity, potential futurities and reconciliation of contested histories, Ekaterina’s research questions how, why and to what end the Renovation has cast its targets as unequivocally ‘anachronistic’.
Biography:
Ekaterina is a third year PhD candidate in the Centre for Urban Conflict Research (UCR). Her doctoral research is funded by the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts (with high distinction) from the University of Toronto, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal and Governor General’s Silver Medal Nomination at Trinity College upon graduating. She also holds an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge.