2 pm to 3 pm New York Time

on Zoom

Ella Rossman,
PhD in History from UCL, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO)

on

Post-Socialist as Postfeminist: Women’s Organising and Illiberal Mobilisation in the Long Perestroika

Ella Rossman is a historian and a Russian feminist and anti-war activist in exile. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO). Her academic interests include the history of women and gender under state socialism and in the postsocialist context, as well as the history of knowledge and feminist epistemology. She holds a PhD in History from UCL and has held fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of London, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her research has been published in Gender & History, Girlhood Studies, Ab Imperio, History of Science and Humanities, and other academic journals, as well as in the edited volume Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe: People Power (Routledge, 2024). Her commentary on Soviet and contemporary Russian gender policies and women’s movements has appeared in media outlets including BBC Radio 4, NBC News, Newsweek, la Repubblica, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Meduza, and Novaia Gazeta, among others. In 2022, she co-founded Feminist Anti-War Resistance, an activist network opposing Putin’s dictatorship and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The FAR team was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 2023.

About the presentation: This presentation explores the diversity of women’s organising in the countries of the former Soviet Union during the long perestroika. While existing research has focused primarily on pro-democratic feminist groups of this period — those most recognisable within Western definitions of feminism — my archival work points to the active development of a much broader range of women’s organisations. These include nationalist, religious, socialist, and neo-Bolshevik groups across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Largely understudied, they challenge conventional, often teleological understandings of post-socialist transformation. Rather than a linear progression toward liberal democracy, they reveal a more complex and contested landscape in which multiple visions of the future coexisted. They also bring into view the “darker” side of perestroika — one that was not solely oriented toward democratisation but also generated new forms of inequality, violence, and illiberalism across the former Soviet states, which defined the region’s development. The paper argues that new forms of illiberal women’s mobilisation functioned as an important link between socialist “state feminism” and later pro-government women’s organising in countries such as Russia and Belarus. Largely overlooked and underestimated by researchers earlier, they later became a key pillar of authoritarian rule and therefore remain in need of further theorisation.

About the Workshop: We kindly ask all participants to read the paper in advance. This workshop will be held on Zoom, beginning with a brief presentation by Ella Rossman, followed by an open discussion. Participants are encouraged to share their thoughts and ask questions related to both the paper and the presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

2 pm to 3 pm New York Time

In Person and on Zoom

Laurel Thorne,
PhD Student in the Slavic Studies Department at Brown University

on

Rematriation as Resistance: Indigenous Feminist Practice in Alaska

Laurel Thorne is a PhD Student in the Slavic Studies Department at Brown University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Mississippi State University, where she concentrated on women and gender in the Russian Empire. She received her M.A. in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her master’s thesis examined the role of women in the colonization of Russian Alaska. At Brown, Laurel’s research explores Indigeneity, gender, and empire, with a particular focus on the history of Alutiiq women of Kodiak, Alaska, from the Russian colonial period to the current day. She draws on Indigenous feminist theory and rematriation methodologies to challenge settler-colonial frameworks and foreground Indigenous perspectives, both historically and contemporarily.

About the presentation: This talk brings Indigenous feminist studies in Slavic Studies through a critical analysis of Kodiak Island, Alaska, under Russian colonial rule. While Indigenous feminism has been widely theorized in scholarship on the Americas and the Pacific, it has remained underutilized in analyses of Indigenous communities affected by Russian colonialism. Laurel Thorne argues that Indigenous feminism offers a critical framework for confronting Russian colonial narratives of Kodiak. Centering the voices and experiences of Kodiak Alutiiq women, her paper examines how Indigenous feminist practices function as a form of resistance to Russian imperial power. Much of the existing historical scholarship about Russian Alaska today relies on the colonial archive and reproduces colonial perspectives. While Laurel engages with colonial sources, including paintings, ethnographic accounts, and memoirs, she reads them against the grain of their imperial logics. She also foregrounds Alutiiq-produced sources, including community accounts, oral histories, and legends. Using Indigenous feminist theory as both a framework and methodology, her paper demonstrates how Alutiiq women’s practices of care, resistance, and rematriation contest the legacies of Russian colonialism and recenter Indigenous women as historical agents rather than colonial subjects.

About the Workshop: We kindly ask all participants, whether attending in person or via Zoom, to read the paper in advance. The workshop will begin with a brief presentation by Laurel Thorne, followed by an open discussion during which participants are encouraged to share their thoughts and ask questions related to both the paper and the presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

Meet us in person! 

European Union Studies Center, Rm 5200.07

(a.k.a. Political Science Thesis Room)

CUNY Graduate Center

365 5th Ave

New York, New York

February 24, 2026 marks the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, preceded by the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas in 2014.

Since that time, Ukraine has demonstrated heroic resistance. Thousands of women and men have declared their devotion to serving their country — defending it on the front lines, saving lives as medics, and volunteering in every way possible to achieve the long-awaited victory over the aggressor.

At the same time, even as daily air raid sirens warn of incoming deadly drones and missile attacks, millions of Ukrainians preserve their political convictions and unwavering support for democracy. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology confirms this in its survey results, showing a steadfast tendency among Ukrainians to endure the war for as long as necessary—reflecting not only their deep desire for a just peace, but also their determination to assert an independent, sovereign voice to the world.

At a time when temperatures dropped to –23°C (~9F), the Kremlin ordered brutal attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, once again violating the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit strikes against civilian and non-military critical infrastructure. On January 21, 2026 alone, the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, lost 60% of its electricity supply, leaving people without heat or power as freezing temperatures gripped the city. Families were forced to survive without the most basic conditions essential for life. What Ukrainians now call “cholodomor” — echoing the Holodomor carried out by the Soviet regime — is seen as a new form of genocide, aimed at breaking and destroying millions of Ukrainians across the country.

Nevertheless, even in these unbearable circumstances, millions of Ukrainians found the strength to adapt. Even two-year-old twins, Yaroslav and Sviatoslav, learned to use the stairs during blackouts — small children growing up too quickly in a country forced to live without light.

Despite the resilience of Ukrainians, their ability to adapt (even in children) and their unwavering resistance to Russian aggression, the daily violations of human rights remind us that there are truths the world must never forget:

To this day, the global community knows far too little about the Russian torture prison “Izolyatsia” in Donetsk, which surviving Ukrainians describe as nothing less than a concentration camp.

Similarly, Ukrainian prisoners of war suffer in multiple Russian detention facilities, where they endure systemic torture, inhumane conditions, denial of medical care, severe food deprivation, and the stripping of their moral dignity simply for being Ukrainian.

Thousands of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by the Russian Federation and forcibly separated from their parents, leading to the International Criminal Court indictment of the Kremlin leader. Over 600 children have been killed, and thousands more injured or traumatized. Russian forces have made hospitals, schools, and daycares ordinary targets of their attacks, including the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in the summer of 2024, where intensive care, oncology, and surgical units were damaged, leaving the most vulnerable at risk. Daycare centers have also been hit, as in the kindergarten in the Kholodnohirskyi district of Kharkiv in the fall of 2025.

Thousands of Ukrainian women mourn the husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers they have lost or who remain missing in action. At the same time, countless women have fallen victim to Russian aggression —whether serving on the front lines in the Ukrainian armed forces, rescuing and treating soldiers, or simply living their daily lives in Ukraine. 

This is not the full list of all the suffering the Kremlin has brought to Ukraine, but it stands as a testament to the principle: “Where there is heroism, there is no final defeat.” These words, written by the renowned Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko, were inscribed on the helmet of Ukrainian short-track speed skater Oleh Handei, who was barred from wearing it at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Similarly, freestyle skier Kateryna Kotsar was forbidden to wear a helmet reading “Be brave like Ukrainians.”

The pattern continued with skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was disqualified simply for wearing a helmet honoring Ukrainian athletes killed by the Kremlin. Even in sport, the war in Ukraine could not be ignored — and yet the attempt to honor its victims was dismissed rather than respected.

Each of us can still play a part in supporting their fight and standing with Ukrainians in any way we can.

Revived Soldiers Ukraine

National Bank of Ukraine’s Military Fund

Razom for Ukraine

Come Back Alive

Gender and Transformation in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia Workshop stands with Ukraine

Sources:

Kyiv International Institute of Sociology

The Kyiv Independent

Book Release. Stanislav Aseyev

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

BBC (The “Heroes of Kharkiv'”…)

Ministry of Defence of Ukraine

Reuters (Oleh Handei)

Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (Lina Kostenko)

The Kyiv Independent (Kateryna Kotsar)

CNN (Vladyslav Heraskevych)

Inna O.

2 pm to 3 pm New York Time

On Zoom

Dragana Prvulović,
PhD Candidate at the University of Ottawa

on

“We Are Reigned In”: Serb Women in Post-War Vukovar Caught Between Silence and Rage

In conversation with Anja Vojvodic (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Olivera Jokic (John Jay College, CUNY)

Dragana Prvulović is a sociologist and ethnographer whose work examines minority politics, post-conflict societies, and the everyday dynamics of belonging. She recently completed her PhD with a dissertation titled Enemy Minority: Negotiating Ethnic Difference in Post-Conflict Vukovar, a critical ethnography of Croatian Serb everyday life in the aftermath of war. Her research spans questions of language, education, gender, and migration, and has been supported by the SSHRC. She is currently employed at the Archive of Serbs in Croatia, where her research focuses on historical revisionism and minority institutions.   

About the presentation: Prvulović’s paper examines how Serb women in post-conflict Vukovar navigate the entangled forces of nationalism, gendered violence, and social marginalization. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, she analyzes how Serb women experience and respond to their minority status within a deeply divided town where nationalist tensions shape everyday life. Through vignettes and interviews, the paper traces how gendered expectations of silence and restraint coexist with simmering rage, emotions that are rarely given legitimate public expression. While some women channel their frustrations into political engagement, others turn toward nationalist discourse as a means of reclaiming agency in a context that offers few alternatives. The murder of Jasna Veselinović, treated initially with silence, exemplifies how gender-based violence against Serb women is often depoliticized, even within their own communities. Yet, expressions of anger—whether in conversations, jokes, or online spaces—reveal a subtext of disillusionment with Croatian state narratives and liberal feminist paradigms. The paper argues that Serb women’s affective responses are not reducible to only nationalist chauvinism, but also reflect the realities of being both ethnicized and feminized in post-war Croatia. Ultimately, these women’s positions reveal how disempowerment can manifest not only in silence but also in complex and politicized forms of rage.

About the Workshop: We kindly ask all Zoom participants to read the paper in advance. The session will begin with a brief presentation by Dragana Prvulović, followed by an open discussion and Q&A based on both the presentation and the paper.

Register for Zoom Here

Friday January 30

2 pm to 3 pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Ieva Sakelaite (PhD candidate at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science)

To be seen vulnerable: Artivism for Ukraine as Expressions of Collective Agency in Regional Crisis

Register for Zoom Here

Friday February 20

2 pm to 3 pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Dragana Prvulović (PhD Candidate at the University of Ottawa)

“We Are Reigned In”: Serb Women in Post-War Vukovar Caught Between Silence and Rage

In conversation with Anja Vojvodic (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Olivera Jokic (John Jay College, CUNY)

Register for Zoom Here

Recognizing the Four-year anniversary of the full-scale war in Ukraine

Friday March 6

2 pm to 3 pm (New York Time)

In person and on Zoom

Laurel Thorne (PhD Student, Slavic Studies, Brown University)

Rematriation as Resistance: Indigenous Feminist Practice in Siberia and Alaska

Register for Zoom Here

Friday April 24

2 pm to 3 pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Ella Rossman (Researcher, Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO))

Post-Socialist as Postfeminist: Women’s Organising and Illiberal Mobilisation in the Long Perestroika

Register for Zoom Here

2 pm to 3 pm New York Time

On Zoom

Ieva Sakelaite,
PhD candidate at Vilnius University, Institute of International Relations and Political Science

on

To be seen vulnerable: Artivism for Ukraine as Expressions of Collective Agency in Regional Crisis

Ieva Šakelaitė is a PhD candidate at Vilnius University, the Institute of International Relations and Political Science. Ieva’s doctoral research concerns connections between visibility in public spaces and collective agency, focusing on artivism in support of Ukraine in Lithuania. Her work is interdisciplinary, drawing on visual studies, feminist theory, international relations, and political theory. Ieva holds an MA in Politics and Media (2022) and a BA in Scandinavian studies (2017), both from Vilnius University, and an MA in Literature, Culture and Media (2019) from Lund University. Currently, Ieva teaches a BA course on Feminist theory at Vilnius University.

About the presentation: In her study, Ieva Šakelaitė contributes to the literature on the visuality of collective agency by examining the surge of public artistic activism in Lithuania in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While much scholarship on artistic activism within visual studies emphasizes symbolic resistance to dominant discourses, these demonstrations do not overtly resist hegemonic narratives; rather, they align with the Lithuanian government’s position on the war in Ukraine. Drawing on feminist theorists Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood, she proposes conceptualizing these demonstrations beyond the paradigms of resistance and subversion. Instead, Ieva argues that they express and enact collective vulnerability, articulated through visual motifs of suffering, wounded, and vulnerable bodies. Her research examines how artivism can simultaneously sustain hegemonic narratives—such as nationalism and victimhood—while functioning as a form of agentic politics that renders care visible, fosters horizontal ties, and builds affective solidarities among post-imperial subjects of the former Soviet empire.

About the Workshop: We kindly ask all Zoom participants to read the paper in advance. The workshop will open with a short presentation by Ieva Šakelaitė, followed by an open discussion and Q&A drawing on both the presentation and the paper.

Register for Zoom Here

 

2pm to 3pm New York Time

In person and on Zoom

Tatiana Krivobokova,
Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, University of Padova, Italy

on

Feminist Transnational Opposition as Agents of Democratization in Authoritarian Homeland through Transnational Social Field. Case of Russia

Dr. Krivobokova is the Project Coordinator for the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network at the University of Padova and an active member of the Scholars at Risk (SAR) network. (SAR is an international network dedicated to protecting academic freedom and supporting scholars and students at risk due to repression, censorship, conflict, or other forms of political or ideological persecution). She has been an invited lecturer on these issues—particularly regarding the cases of Belarus and Russia—at the University of Padova (Italy) and Monash University (Australia), and she regularly co-chairs Advocacy Days in Italy and other EU countries. While her work has primarily focused on Belarusian and Russian cases, she has also been involved in advocacy for Iranian, Turkish, and Afghan scholars.

About the presentation: In her study, Dr. Krivobokova examines how the severely repressive nature of the Russian authoritarian regime—including its classification of feminism as an extremist ideology and its use of transnational repression against politically active individuals abroad—shapes the strategies of feminist activists. Because it is unsafe for activists to operate under their real names, these groups organize as horizontal and largely anonymous networks. While this structure is essential for their security, it also makes it difficult to provide verifiable evidence of affiliation with specific Russian or Belarusian initiatives, such as the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR) and others.

About the Workshop: We kindly ask that all participants, both in person and on Zoom, read the paper in advance. During the workshop, Dr. Krivobokova will give a brief presentation, after which participants are invited to engage in discussion and ask questions based on both the presentation and the paper.

Register for Zoom Here

Meet us in person! 

European Union Studies Center, Rm 5203

CUNY Graduate Center

365 5th Ave

New York, New York

2pm to 3pm (New York Time) on Zoom

Tania Arcimovich,
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Erfurton

on

“The State of Limbo:” Knowledge, Gender, Migration. Displaced scholars from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia

Dr. Tania Arcimovich is a researcher whose primary focus is cultural studies, feminist theory, and history. She earned her Master’s in Sociology (Cultural Studies) from the European Humanities University (Vilnius) and defended the dissertation at the International Centre for the Study of Culture (Justus Liebig University Giessen). Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Erfurt and is involved in the project “Protecting Academia at Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for Thriving Culture of Higher Education in Europe”.

About the presentation: The aim of Dr. Tania Arcimovich’s research is to analyze the challenges faced by displaced female scholars from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia who are compelled to leave their home countries and adapt to new cultural and academic environments. Her study examines the conditions and unique aspects of knowledge production among these displaced and migrant female scholars. The primary focus lies on the tension between two realms: the material world—which includes the circumstances of migration, adaptation, mimicry, and transition faced by these scholars, alongside their bodily and emotional experiences and the labor of care—and the epistemological process related to knowledge production. The goal is to reveal how these material and often traumatic experiences influence or shape the knowledge that is produced by these scholars.

The paper is part of a collaborative research project titled “Protecting Academia at Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of Higher Education in Europe.” This project involves partnerships between the University of Erfurt, Central European University in Vienna, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, with support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Dr. Arcimovich will have a brief presentation. Following Dr. Arcimovich’s presentation, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Anna Ratecka

on

At Home with Feminism: Sex Workers’ Politics of Belonging in the Feminist Movement in Poland

Dr. Anna Ratecka is a postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden, where she works on the SUSTAINACTION project on civil society resilience in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on sex workers’ mobilizations, governance, anti-trafficking, and feminist organizing. She earned her PhD at Jagiellonian University (2022) and has held positions or fellowships at the University of Oslo, Oxford, and Vienna.

About the presentation: The presentation will discuss the alternative feminist contemporalities and spatialities of feminist movement by providing insight into the feminist debates over sex work in Poland. It will focus on the strategies and emotional labour that sex workers rights collective Sex Work Polska enacted to achieve belonging in the feminist movement in Poland. To claim belonging and to embrace belonging sex workers right activist used affective strategies presenting their definition and vocabulary to discuss sex work, politicize their situation, create emotional community around their claims pointing which feminist standpoint on sex work is correct and aligning with feminist frames and claims. The aim is to identify the affective strategies sex workers activist used to find resonance among feminist publics. This locates the debates in reflection on the role of emotions in social movements but also presents the local trajectories of feminist stories that differ significantly from Western European and US.

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Anna Ratecka will have a brief presentation. Following Dr. Ratecka’s presentation, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

2 pm to 3pm (New York time), on Zoom

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova

on

Choosing Sex: Soviet Theories of Gender Identity Development and Their Impact on Intersex/Trans patient Management

In conversation with:

Alexandra Novitskaya (Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova is an independent researcher working in the field of transgender studies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Her research interests span transgender health, social movements, political science, sociolinguistics, history, and biochemistry. Currently, Yana is working on a book “Transgender Russia: the rise and fall of trans rights in an autocracy” (expected in 2027). She is also doing a PhD in Public Health at the Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health.

Dr. Novitskaya’s research interests are at the intersections of sexuality, national identity, geopolitics, migration studies, transnational feminist and queer theory, and feminist ethnography. Her articles and book chapters have been published in NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, The Russian Review, Journal or Europe-Asia Studies, Sexuality & Culture, The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and others. Dr. Novitskaya is working on a book project about queer asylum-seekers from countries formerly in the Soviet Union.

About the presentation: In the Soviet Union, the 1960s and 1970s saw debates on intersex patient management, including the “choice of sex”. Some authors insisted on discovering the “true sex” by means of increasingly sophisticated diagnostic procedures, whereas others highlighted the importance of social and psychological factors. These debates motivated researchers to propose their theories of gender identity development. Both biological and social explanations were put forward, but very soon, their dialectical relationship became emphasized under the influence of state-sponsored Marxism. Psychiatrist Aron Belkin studied “individuals who endured the change of sex” (mostly intersex but also transsexual patients) to propose his model of gender identity formation, which combined psychoanalytical terminology with demonstrative anti-Freudism. Psychiatrist Aleksandr Bukhanovskiĭ was looking for biological correlates of transsexualism, but his theoretically most interesting paper explored the case of three siblings who had been erroneously raised in a wrong gender. Despite the ideological constraints, Soviet researchers were free to propose their explanations and engage with foreign literature, primarily the works of John Money.

RSVP for Zoom Link Here

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Kirey-Sitnikova will have a brief presentation. After Dr. Novitskaya’s comments, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.