My research interests lie at the intersection of memory, mourning, and corporeality in the prose of contemporary Russian-speaking female authors.

I am currently working on a dissertation that focuses on four novels written over the past twelve years, each engaging with major historical events and the collective memory of the Soviet Union—particularly the Stalinist period, perestroika, and the present day. These novels are: Liudmila Ulitskaia’s Jacob’s Ladder (2015), Polina Barskova’s Living Pictures (2014), Mariia Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory (2017), and Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (2013). My central argument is that these authors construct metaphorical sites of mourning for the victims of Stalin’s political repression through motifs and language imbued with corporeality.

The broader aim of my research is to underscore the necessity of a polyphonic and truthful engagement with historical memory. Reckoning with the past is particularly urgent in today’s political climate in Russia, where selective memory distorts accounts about Soviet history and fuels Soviet nostalgia. Against this backdrop, the novels I study function as counter-narratives, insisting on remembrance of what official discourse seeks to suppress.

My doctoral studies are funded by the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW DTP).