Biography
Before coming to Cambridge in 2016 to study for a Master’s in Heritage Studies, I studied Archaeology and History at the Free University of Berlin, and Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. I gathered professional experience at museums in Istanbul as well as in Yerevan, Armenia, where I also worked for the Caucasus Institute think-tank.
With the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as the Cambridge Trust, I am now working on a PhD project at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. Currently, I am looking forward to a period as a visiting scholar at SciencesPo, Paris, in 2020.
Research
My PhD project at Cambridge will analyse the changes which heritage sites connected to the revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin have gone through since the fall of the Soviet Union. It will do so in various different cultural-geographical contexts - from a museum-village in remote Siberia to Lenin's dachanear the centre of power in Moscow. Employing approaches from heritage studies, anthropology, and temporal philosophy, it will question the nature of historical personality and its representation in socialist and postsocialist contexts. This research builds on work carried out for my MPhil dissertation at Cambridge, which analysed the heritage landscape of Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Lenin (born Ulyanov), and traced changes in meaning and significance of Soviet-era heritage sites for the local population.
Teaching and Supervisions
Supervisors: Dr Lila Janik
Advisors: Prof Marie-Louise Sørensen
Other Professional Activities
Currently I am initiating the Cambridge Memory and Democracy Group, a collective which seeks to bring together researchers and activists working in heritage and memory studies to debate the relevance of our scholarly activity to democratic and civil society initiatives around the world.
