nki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland (2017). In the winter semester 2020–2021, he is a visiting lecturer at the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
Lev Manovich (PhD) is one of the leading theorists of digital culture worldwide and a pioneer in applying data science to analyse contemporary culture. Manovich is the author and editor of 15 books, including Cultural Analytics, AI Aesthetics, Theories of Software Culture, Instagram and Contemporary Image, Software Takes Command, Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database and The Language of New Media, which was described as “the most suggestive and broad-ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan”. He was included in the list of “25 People Shaping the Future of Design” in 2013 and the list of “50 Most Interesting People Building the Future” in 2014. Manovich is a Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab. The lab created projects for the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the New York Public Library, Google, and other clients. Manovich’s latest book Cultural Analytics was published by the MIT Press in fall 2020.
Alisa Maximova is a junior research fellow at the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities in the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Alisa is a sociologist interested in studying culture and interaction in various contexts. She carries out research in the field of Museum Studies, investigating how people make sense of exhibitions, perceive museum objects (exhibits, texts, multimedia, technological devices), and interact with each other in museum space. She focuses on contemporary cultural practices and on new approaches to museum visiting that emphasize audience participation and agency. Her other research interests include ethnomethodology and science and technology studies, as well as memory studies.
Maria-Valeria Morris, PhD, is an anthropologist and folklorist based in Moscow, Russia. She graduated from the National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia and then from the Russian State University of the Humanities, Moscow, summa cum laude, is a research fellow at School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and an assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Studies and Social Communication in the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russia. Her primary research interests are late medieval and early modern Irish folklore (specifically, mythological genealogies and rapparee/Jacobite parafolklore), contemporary Irish Republicanism and the semiotics of sequential art. She has translated both academic literature and fiction, most notably Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. She teaches academic translation at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and is also an illustrator and a comic book artist.
Jeremy Morris is a social anthropologist and an associate professor in Global Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Research interests include the ethnography of post-socialism, the political economy of everyday life, and the anthropology of heterogeneity. He does research in the fields of post-Soviet small towns, transformations of the working class, the political ecology of activism, and the informal economy. His recent works include: Everyday Post-Socialism: Working-Class Communities in the Russian Margins. (Palgrave 2016), Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces: Practices, Institutions and Networks. / Morris, Jeremy; Polese, Abel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Galina Orlova is a senior research fellow at the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences, the National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She is a social researcher with interests in nuclear urbanism, digital qualitative studies, science and technology studies, discourse analysis, and 20th century Russian history.
Marcus Owens is a San Francisco-based architect and urban historian. He is a founding partner of CAMO Design and holds a PhD in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning with an emphasis in Science and Technology Studies.
Nikolay Rudenko is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Science and Technology, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia and holds a PhD in Sociology from St. Petersburg State University. His expertise includes science and technology studies, digital sociology, the sociology of culture, and urban sociology. Nikolay is currently a principal investigator in the “MARTA” project that aims to map ongoing R&D activities related to autonomous vehicles in Russia and worldwide.
Nikolay Ryzhakov is a software developer and data scientist. He received an engineering degree from ITMO – Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics National Research University, Saint Petersburg, Russia. His expertise includes machine learning and data visualization. Nikolay has been involved in several medical data analysis projects, including MRI and ECG image processing, and sleep data analysis.
Ekaterina Shmeleva has an MA in Cultural Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia and is the vice principal of pastoral care at Khoroshool, Moscow. She is a graduate of the “Teach for Russia” program and has written academic and popular articles about the modern urban environment in its digital and theatrical manifestations. She also organizes children’s urban camps and works for the research group “Culture of Participation: Communities and Practices” (HSE University).
Denis Sivkov is a lecturer with the Institute for Social Sciences at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, Russia. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Volgograd State University, Russia. His work is located at the intersection of STS, mobilities studies, and the anthropology of outer space.
Andrey Vozyanov is a lecturer at the European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania and the European College of Liberal Arts, Minsk, Belarus. He is also a researcher at Minsk Urban Platform, currently exploring the needs and possibilities of local communities in Belarus. He defended his PhD thesis on public transport activism in Ukraine and Romania at the Graduate School for Eastern and Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany. His latest academic publications are dedicated to political Instagram, practices of care amidst mass repressions, and media segregation within society, all explored in the context of the ongoing events in Belarus.
Oksana Zaporozhets, PhD, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Development, a head of the Laboratory for Urban Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Her current research projects focus on urban inequalities, new residential areas and large housing estates, neighboring in the big city. Her research interests also include street art and everyday mobility. She co-edited the book Microurbanism. City in Details (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2014)
Anna Zhelnina holds a PhD in sociology from the City University of New York, USA. Her research interests include such topics as urban civic participation, the challenges of engaging neighbors in diverse neighborhoods, and the mechanisms that urban political players employ to promote their visions of a city’s future. Her doctoral dissertation, “Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies and Political Mobilization in Moscow’s Renovation,” explores the political developments triggered by a large-scale urban renewal project in Moscow, the competing visions of a “good city,” private and common good, and how proposed ways of achieving these goals clashed during the renovation controversy. Anna joined the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2020 to work on the theme “Urban utopias, citizenship, and alternatives”.