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Anna Ivanova

JLU00058 2.jpg
JLU00058 2.jpg
About

I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus Liebig University Giessen. I specialize on political sociology, particularly ideology, hegemony, and power relations. My doctoral project looks at the intersection of urban sociology and memory studies, examining how urban space and collective memory are utilized by ruling elites in the struggle of hegemony.

I hold a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, and a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the Karazin Kharkiv National University (Kharkiv, Ukraine).

I work as a Research Assistant/Teaching Centre Coordinator at the GCSC, where I am also responsible for the development of the predoc-programme. In addition, I work as a Project Coordinator at the Martin Opitz Library, managing collaborative research between two international teams focused on the history of Eastern Europe.

Dissertation working title: De-Сommemoration in the Urban Space of Ukraine: Discourses, Practices, Objects 

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Andreas Langenohl

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6898-7951

Full CV: Academia.edu

Contact

anna.ivanova@gcsc.uni-giessen.de 

Publications

Chapters in Peer-Review Edited Volumes

  • Ivanova, Anna. ‘The Russian World, the Great Past, and the External Threat: Deconstructing Vladimir Putin’s Discourse on Sovereignty (1999–2022)’. In Sovereignty through Practice. Routledge, 2024.

Co-authored

  • Anna Ivanova, Matthias Melcher and Nelly Gérard, Studying Discursive Practices of Sovereignty, In Sovereignty through Practice: Multiscalarity, Reflexivity, and Interdisciplinarity, edited by Elia Bescotti and Jon-Wyatt Matlack, 2024. 

Reviews

  • "When Bourdieu Meets the City: Approaching Trialectics of (Urban) Space [Review of: Wacquant, Loïc: Bourdieu in the City: Challenging Urban Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2023.]." In: KULT_online 69 (2024). https://doi.org/10.22029/ko.2024.1427 

Editorial

  • „Es gab Warnungen“: Wie der Krieg die Freiheit der Ukraine-Forschung bedroht. In: der Freitag, 25.11.2025. 
Presentations

2025

  • "'Why Deny What Really Happened?': Contesting the Soviet Past in Ukraine’s Urban Space". 20-23.11.2025, Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Washington, D.C. 
  • "Can Academia Speak about Ukraine? Bridging The War, Scholarly Knowledge Production, and Ukrainian Studies". 16-18.10.2025, Conference 
    "Academic Freedom in Flux: Purpose, Beneficiaries, and Practices in the Contemporary World", Tashkent. 
  • "A Matter of National Security": War, Memory Politics and the Urban Space of Ukraine". 26-27.06.2025 Conference "Dynamics of Conflict and Peacebuilding in Eastern Europe: Interdisciplinary and Cross-Regional Perspective", University of Bern. 
  • 'Wartime Memory Politics and the City: Competing Approaches in the Production of Space in Kharkiv, Ukraine'. 31.01.2025, Conference "Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine (2014-2024)", Justus Liebig University Giessen. 

2024

  • 'Destruction and Production of (Urban) Space in Wartime Kharkiv: Discourses, Practices, Objects'. 24.10.2024, Workshop "Kharkiv under Fire: Local History in Times of War", FernUniversität in Hagen (Berlin). 
  • Co-Presenter (with Gundula Pohl and Domenico Scagliusi), Memories of an Uneasy Past. 8.10.2024, DGO Congress of Central and Eastern European Studies (ceecon 2024), Freie Universität Berlin.
  • 'Urban Space Transformation as an Instrument for Social (Dis)Integration'. 29.08.2024, 16th Conference of the European Sociological Association "Tension, Trust and Transformation", Porto.
  • 'Competing Discourses on Decolonization of the Urban Space on the Russian-Ukrainian Borderland: Examining the Case of Kharkiv, 2022-2023'. 10.07.2024, CADAAD 2024: Borders and Boundaries in/across Discourses, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.
  • 'Russain and Soviet Monuments and Memorials in War-Time Ukraine: The Case of Kharkiv 2024'. 17.06.2024, Workshop "Contested Monuments", University of Bonn. 

2023

  • 'Decommunization, Decolonization and Derussification in the Urban Space of Wartime Ukraine'. 14.12.2023, Workshop “A Space for ‘Place’ in Social Sciences”, Sciences Po, Paris.
  • 'Decommunization in the Urban Space of Ukraine: in the Times of War: Kharkiv Case'. 9.11.2023, Ukraine's Altered Landscapes: Losing and Recovering Alterity in the Face of War, Institute for Human Sciences, Wien.
  • “Doing Critical Social Science Research under the Conditions of War: Levels of Unfreedom”. 21.01.2023, Workshop “Unfree Spaces in the Modern World: Resistant Responses – Empowering Acts”, University of Regensburg.
Research Interests

  • Political sociology
  • Critical Discourse Studies
  • Power, hegemony and ideology
  • Political radicalism and social polarization
Teaching

Seminar "A Place for Space in Social Science", Winter Term 2024/25, Institut für Soziologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.

Co-Teaching with Prof. Dr. Andreas Langenohl: Seminar "Sociological Diagnoses of Contemporary Society in Germany", Summer Term 2024, Institut für Soziologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.

Memberships

  • European Sociological Association (ESA)
  • Memory Studies Association (MSA) 
  • Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)

Within Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen:

  • International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC)
  • Giessen Center for Eastern European Studies (GiZo) - Scholarship holder

Within GCSC:

Other

Projects

  • Co-organizer of the conference "Nothing to Remember? Politics, Practices, and Agents of Commemorating Peace", 22–23 January 2026
  • Co-organizer of the Keynote Lecture and the Exhibition "Spaces of Peripheralization: Extractivism, Pollution and Environmental Future in Southeastern Europe" by Prof. Dr. Ger Duijzings and Miloš Đurović, GCSC Keynote Lecture Series, 22.05.2025.
  • Co-organizer of the Round Table "Dynamics of Memory Across Media", GCSC Keynote Lecture Series, 17.06.2024
  • Co-organizer of the Public Talk "Depoliticised City: Post-Pandemic and Post-Protest Minsk of the 2020s" by Aliaksei Bratachkin, GCSC, 5.07.2024

Summer Schools

  • "Contested Memoryscapes: Central Europe and its Fractured Pasts", GS OSES, Prague, 26.09.-1.10.2022.
  • Greifswalder Ukrainicum “After the Empires”: Ukraine's (Post-)Colonial Entenglements", Greifswald University & Krupp-Kolleg, Greifswald, 07.–19.08.2023.
  • XIV Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture, "Cultures at War", Catholic University of Portugal & Critical Theory Network, Lisbon, 24 - 29.06.2024.

Theses

Master Thesis: Objective and Subjective Democracy: A Comparison of Different Regime Types, 2018, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main

Master Thesis: Radicalization of the Ukrainian Political Discourse in 2012-2015 (in Ukrainian), 2017, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

Bachelor Thesis: "United County": Analyzing Ukrainian Discourse of Unity (in Ukrainian), 2015, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine