Zinaida Vasilyeva

Publications

• Veigl, Sophie; Vasilyeva, Zinaida; Müller, Ruth (2024). Scientific-Intellectual Movements in the Age of Post-Truth: The Case of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (under review)
• Melnikova, Ekaterina; Vasilyeva, Zinaida (eds.) (2024). Academia across the borders. Verlag Der Kulturstiftung Sibirien. 978-3-942883-40-5 (ISBN)
• Masalskaya, Aleksandra; Vasilyeva, Zinaida (2019). At the Periphery of the Empire: Recycling Old Japanese Cars into IT community in Vladivostok. In: From Russia with Codes: Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times. Eds. Mario Biagioli & Vincent Lepinay. Duke University Press.
• Kasatkina, Alexandra; Vasilyeva, Zinaida; Khandozhko, Roman (2018). Thrown into Collaboration: An Ethnography of Transcript Authorization. In: Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography Through Fieldwork Devices. Eds. Tomas Sanches Criado & Adolfo Estalella, Berghahn’s EASA book series, 132-153.
• Vasilyeva, Zinaida (2018). Der unauffällige Staat: Die Infrastruktur der Amateurverbände in der Zeit des Spätsozialismus. In: Hochkultur für das Volk? Literatur, Kunst und Musik in der Sowjetunion aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive. Ed. Igor Narsky. Vol. 97, series „Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien“, De Gruyter/Oldenbourg, 213-234.
• Vasilyeva, Zinaida (2014). Samodeiatel’nost‘ : v poiskakh sovetskoi modernosti ["Self-Activity": Searching for a Soviet Modernity], Novoie literaturnoie Obozreniie, 128, 54-63.
• Vasilyeva, Zinaida (2013). Video-Mediated Communicative Interaction: An Analysis, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 8, 117-148.

Projects

2023-2025 - IETI Project, BMBF (01IO2202)

Past projects:

2019 - 2022  METAFORIS: Making Europe through and for its research infrastructures, Case: European Space Agency, DFG, Technical University of Munich, PI Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer

2018 - 2019  Thinking Evolution - Thinking Life: Evolution in the Postgenomic Age, Technical University of Munich, PI Prof. Ruth Müller

2013 - 2015  Russian Computer Scientists at Home and Abroad”, STS Center of the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, PI Prof. Mario Biagioli and Prof. Vincent Lepinay

2012 - 2013  Ideology and Knowledge in the Nuclear Science City of Obninsk, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy, Moscow, PI Prof. Andrei Zorin

2011 - 2013  Do-it-yourself practices and technical knowledge in late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, SNF project, Institute of Anthropology, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, PI Profs. Ellen Hertz and Prof. Philippe Geslin

Curriculum Vitae

May 2019 - PhD in Anthropology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Title: “From Skills to Selves: Recycling ‘Soviet DIY’ in Post-Soviet Russia”. Co-directors : Professor Philippe Geslin, Professor Ellen Hertz

2004 – 2006 - MA in Cultural Anthropology, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia

1999 – 2004 - Diploma in History, St. Petersburg State University, Russia

Tasks

I am an anthropologist of knowledge with a particular interest in transformations, controversies, and epistemic shifts within techno-scientific communities and societies at large. After completing my Ph.D. on the value transformation of DIY skills and engineering knowledge in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian society, I worked on a scientific controversy in contemporary evolutionary biology and on epistemic shifts in European space policy. More recently, I have been working on the role of artists in creating alternative narratives about technological futures. I am particularly interested in how meanings and values are ascribed to knowledge, and how the ways in which knowledge is ordered and practiced can shift, evolve, and be contested as a result of political, economic, and social transformations.

Before joining the MfN, I worked as a postdoc at the Department of STS at the Technical University of Munich (2018-2023) and as a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Neuchatel (2011-2013, completed in 2019). I enjoyed being a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2016, and at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig in 2017. From 2013 to 2015, I served as the executive director of the project “Russian Computer Scientists at Home and Abroad” at the STS Center of the European University in St. Petersburg.

In the IETI project, I am researching how the MfN as an institution understands, practices, and evaluates its institutional and social impact, with the goal of proposing a more long-term and reflexive methodology for public engagement in museums.