Nikolay Nikolov

Supervisors: Dr Richard Mole and Dr Victor Buchli
Email: nikolay.nikolov.13@ucl.ac.uk

Present status: MPhil candidate, Post-graduate Teaching Assistant
Modules taught: Understanding Society: Introduction to Social Theory (Term 1), Understanding Politics: How Politics Works (Term 2)

Working title of thesis: A Concrete Life: a history of the panel housing complex in the former Soviet bloc

Research: Panel blocks are the largest and most visible legacy of the former socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Until this day, they remain one of the central housing institutions, accommodating up to a third of the population in countries such as Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. How the introduction of the pre-fabricated concrete panels transformed the urban environment and the various social fabrics under the socialist regimes and how these buildings continued to exist after 1989 is a central question, which has thus far received minimal attention. Moreover, what is particularly interesting to explore further the notion of the panel as a central means of systematic ruling of people by means of housing. In the case of post-socialism, the panel block become banal, unseen in the outskirts of cities, yet it is possible to argue that it continues in many ways to represent a microcosm of the given society. As such, how far this housing complex serves as a 'diagnosis of the present' in the former Soviet bloc is the main research question to be investigated.