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Supervisors: Dr Seth Graham and Dr Kata Kryola
Status: MPhil Candidate
Working title of thesis: The Politics of Global Soviet Nostalgia: Memorabilia, Memes, and the War in Ukraine
My research investigates the appropriation and reclamation of Soviet symbology within online spaces, where the USSR is the subject of a retrofuturist utopian narrative that not only rewrites the Soviet past as an ideal future, but that also celebrates its leaders as popular culture icons.
I will evaluate how, beyond its immediate entertainment purposes, this content encapsulates four key themes: the dissatisfaction with Western-style capitalism globally exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, the anti-NATO sentiment resurfaced with the war in Ukraine, Latin America’s shift to the left, and, finally, a form of Soviet Nostalgia that transcends the borders of the Post-Soviet Space.
Research interests: Russian Avant-garde, Soviet aesthetics, digital activism, meme culture, social media deplatforming, education, decolonising the English Curriculum, and global sex-workers led movements.
Affiliations: FRINGE, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy, Politics and Sociology Seminar Series.