My research works at the intersection of visual and legal anthropology, and engages human rights as a critical field of practice, with a long-term focus on Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Russia. I analyse how images, artistic practices, and material landscapes become mediums through which political reflection takes form in contexts of revolution, war, and social transformation. I am particularly interested in practices that appear visually disruptive or legally ambiguous—such as iconoclasm, performative protest, and heritage destruction—and in how these practices participate in broader processes of justice-making, political reordering, and international relations. Grounded in ethnography, this work also asks broader theoretical questions about how visual anthropology, the anthropology of art, political anthropology, and IR can be brought together into the dialogue around global visual politics, and about how artistic practice itself functions as a source of conceptual innovation for social theory.
These questions are developed across several interconnected research strands:
This strand examines how the destruction, transformation, and re-signification of images, monuments, and landscapes shape political and moral orders, especially in Ukraine since 2014. I analyse iconoclastic acts, heritage controversies, and artistic responses to war as forms of visual and affective politics that often emerge where legal and institutional mechanisms of justice remain insufficient. This strand is anchored in the ERC project ICONS: Exploring Global Iconoclastic Politics, which investigates iconoclasm as a recurrent and socially significant form of political expression in contemporary societies.
Representative publications and projects:
2. Art, Law, and Performative Dissent
This line of research explores how artists and legal actors confront political repression through performative, visually charged forms of dissent. Based on long-term research in Russia and Ukraine, it examines how penal categories such as "hooliganism" or "vandalism" operate as tools of political control, and how domestic and international courts become arenas where visual transgression, legal argumentation, and political claims are enacted and tested.
Representative publications and projects:
– Making Art or Breaking Law? Exploring Performative Dissent and Cause Lawyering in Contemporary Russia (PhD project)
– Articles on Pussy Riot, Femen, Voina, and Pyotr Pavlensky
Subversive Intrusions: How Activist Interventions Redefine the Museum
3. Access to Justice of Children and Vulnerable Groups
This strand focuses on the legal representation of precarious populations, particularly unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers across Europe. Combining ethnography and institutional analysis, I examine how access to justice is negotiated across humanitarian, legal, and bureaucratic regimes.
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