Dr.Zinaida Zinaida Vasilyeva

Visiting Researcher

Zinaida.Vasilyeva@mfn.berlin
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I am an anthropologist and science and technology studies (STS) scholar focusing on transformations in science and society. From 2026 to 2027, I am a guest researcher in the Humanities of Nature group at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. My current work examines the impact agenda in Europe, with a particular focus on Germany and the Leibniz research museums. I am interested in how science policy and research institutions respond to changing political and societal expectations, and how they negotiate the roles of research and science communication in this context.

Vita

From 2023 to 2026, as part of the IETI-Projekts at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, I examined how the museum understands, practices, and evaluates its institutional and societal impact. This work focused on developing more long-term and reflexive approaches to engagement within research museums.

My research builds on earlier work in science and technology studies and anthropology. My research builds on a background in anthropology and science and technology studies. From 2018 to 2023, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the Technical University of Munich, where I investigated transformations in European science policy and infrastructures. I completed my Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Neuchâtel in 2019, with a dissertation on the value transformation of DIY skills and engineering knowledge in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian society.

Throughout my academic trajectory, I have engaged with diverse international research environments. I was a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2016 and at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde in 2017.

Earlier in my career, from 2013 to 2015, I served as executive director of the project “Russian Computer Scientists at Home and Abroad” at the STS Center of the European University at St. Petersburg, where I coordinated an international research group studying scientific mobility and expertise.