Visualisation Lab and Researcher, IfL
Projects
Bio
Sofia Gavrilova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Cartography and visual communication at IfL.
In 2019, she completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford on the Soviet project of kraevedenie (local studies) and the network of kraevedenie museums. During her first postdoc years, she adapted it into a monograph which presents the first comprehensive research on the rise and fall of the Soviet project of kraevedenie using post-colonial theory, embeds kraevedenie museums within the existing field of cultural and museum studies, and reveals the Soviet tradition of the imposition of “cultural myths” and “common silences” in the exposition of the museums, which are still visible in the post-Soviet permanent displays.
During her postdoctoral years, Sofia focused on the critical history of the geographical and cartographic knowledge production in the USSR and Russia. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, she began researching the embodied imperialism of the Russian emigration in Tbilisi, Georgia, and how the locals perceive it.
Research interests
- Geovisualisations
- Soviet atlases
- Spatial knowledge
Main publications
Gavrilova, Sofia. Russia’s Regional Museums Representing and Misrepresenting Knowledge about Nature, History and Society. London: Routledge, 2023
Gavrilova, Sofia. Constructing “Russian civilisation”: A critical introduction to the National Atlas of Russia (publ. 2004–2008). In: Eurasian Geography and Economics, (2022), pp. 1-24
Gavrilova, Sofia. Regional Memories of the Great Terror: Representation of the Gulag in Russian Kraevedcheskii Museums. In: Problems of Post-Communism, (2021), pp. 1-15
Contact
Schongauerstraße 9, 04328 Leipzig
+49 341 600 55-253
Home Institution
IfL – Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography