Dr. Zinaida Vasilyeva
Visiting Researcher
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.
Publications
Korun, M., Quaisser, C., Vasilyeva, Z., Dietermann, B., Kühne, N., Hermannstädter, A., Heumann, I., Kaiser, K. (2025). Internationale Kooperationen als leitende Methode. In Umgang mit kolonialen Objekten der Naturkunde. Empfehlungen – Forschung – Reflexionen (1. Auflage, 256). Dresden: Sandstein Kultur. URL: https://www.sandstein-kultur.de/shop/umgang-mit-kolonialen-objekten-der-naturkunde
Melnikova, E., Vasilyeva, Z. (2024). Academia across the borders. Fürstenberg/Havel: Verlag der Kulturstiftung Sibirien, SEC Publications. URL: https://dh-north.org/publikationen/academia-across-the-borders/de
Veigl, S., Vasilyeva, Z., Müller, R. (2025). Scientific-intellectual movements in the post-truth age: The case of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Social Studies of Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127251348254
Schäfer, M., Bührer-Topcu, S., Ehnert, F., Graf, V., Haus, J., Höhener, O., Holtmann, F., Vasilyeva, Z., von Peter, S., Wolf, B. (2025). Orientierungsrahmen zur Erfassung von Wirkungen transdisziplinärer und partizipativer Forschung. (Arbeitspapier, 2-2025, 63) [Arbeitspapier]. Gesellschaft für transdisziplinäre und partizipative Forschung e.V. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15641450
Vasilyeva, Z. (2025). DIY modernity: rethinking socialist experience from the temporal perspective. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 33(1), 15-30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/25739638.2025.2476860
Kaiser, K., Heumann, I. (Hrsg.). (2025). Umgang mit kolonialen Objekten der Naturkunde: Empfehlungen, Forschung, Reflexionen. Dresden: Sandstein Kultur. URL: https://www.sandstein-kultur.de/shop/umgang-mit-kolonialen-objekten-der-naturkunde
Vasilyeva, Z., Loth, A., Margraf, A. (2025). [Poster:] Models for Change: Epistemologies, Expectations, and Practices in Participatory Frameworks. [Poster]. Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) - Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7479/HNMA-ZS14
Vasilyeva, Z. (2024). A Review of Francisco Martínez, Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects: Exhibitions as a Research Method. London: UCL Press, 2021, 202 pp.. Antropologicheskij forum, 20(63), 238-248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2024-20-63-238-248