The project studies the emptying cities, towns, and villages in Eastern Europe and Russia through the lens of “emptiness” as a concrete historical formation that has emerged in conditions when socialist modernity is gone and promises of capitalist modernity have failed. More specifically, it: (1), studies the experiences and narratives of emptiness and emptying; (2), examines the politics and governance of emptying and emptiness; and (3), uses post-socialist “emptying” and “emptiness” as lenses for analysing global reconfigurations of relations between capital, the state, people, and place at a time when capital flows and statecraft are increasingly concentrated in “global cities,” with the rest of urban and non-urban spaces becoming radically disconnected.
Visit the website: emptiness.eu
Applications are invited for a DPhil studentship in anthropology or migration studies; read more here.
Volodymyr Artiukh, Research Associate
Dominic Martin, Postdoctoral Researcher
Michelle Chew, Project Manager
European Research Council
The project will collaborate with local universities in Latvia, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In Latvia, the Riga Stradiņš University will host the Principal Investigator for the duration of fieldwork.
Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
Emptiness (Part I): The empty streets of Blackpool
Blog | Dace Dzenovska
Dace Dzenovska awarded ERC grant for research on emptying towns and villages in Eastern Europe
News | 10/12/2019
Dzenovska, D. (2019). Emptiness: Capitalism After Socialism, Medium
Dzenovska, D. (2020). Emptiness: Capitalism Without People in the Latvian Countryside, American Ethnologist
Dzenovska, D. (2019). The Timespace of Emptiness, American Ethnologist
“Emptiness: Ways of Seeing” | 28 Sep-1 Oct 2021
These roundtables were recorded at the conference which was part of the ERC-funded EMPTINESS project at the University of Oxford, with Rīga Stradiņš University generously hosting the 28 Sep 2021 Field Workshop and a local in-person viewing hub.
Постсоветская пустота (Post-Soviet Emptiness), Polka “Tozhe Rossia” (in Russian) | October 2019
COMPAS, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS
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