Book manuscript
Affective Belonging:
Vulnerable Groups’ Political Subjectivity and HIV in Ukraine
My most recent research project explored what underpins the strength of a public health system in a supposedly weak post-socialist state. Building on more than two years of ethnographic and archival research, this project focused on political mobilization of Ukrainian vulnerable communities (people living with HIV, sex workers, people who use drugs) as citizens through their interactions with the state public health bureaucracy.
Journal Articles
“Honesty and economy on a highway: Entanglements of gift, money, and affection in the narratives of Ukrainian sex workers.” 2021. Economic Anthropology 8, no.1: 34-45.
“‘Nothing about Us without Us’: Sex Workers’ Informal Political Practices in Ukraine.” 2019. Anthropologica 61, no. 2: 261–69.
Book Chapters
“Nudes Buy Army Boots: Agency, Subjectivity, and the Erotic During War (the TerOnlyFans Movement).“ 2024. Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices, edited by Maryna Shevtsova. Lexington Books, pp.85-106.
(with Ivan Shmatko) “Parallel Identities: LGBTQ+ Soldiers and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.” 2024. Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices, edited by Maryna Shevtsova. Lexington Books, pp.63-84.
(with Roman Leksikov) “Beyond western theories: On the use and abuse of “homonationalism” in Eastern Europe.” 2019. In LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Maryna Shevtsova and Radzhana Buyantuyeva. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.25-49.
Research in progress
My new research project is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the categorial relationality of medical humanitarianism. Specifically, I am interrogating humanitarianism as a traveling technology in the context of rebuilding and modernization of TB infrastructure in war-affected Ukraine.