Chisinau : The Making of Neoliberal City. Identities, Memories and Aspirations after the post-Socialist Transformation.

Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces.

Contact: katerina.fuksova@fsv.cuni.cz

I am a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology and History at Charles University in Prague. My research focuses on memory, identity and historical narrative-making in Central Eastern Europe, especially in the Republic of Moldova. My other research interests include urban anthropology, post-socialist urban transformation, and urban social and activist movements in Central Eastern European cities.

My dissertation focuses on the post-socialist transformation of Chisinau, the capital of the Republic of Moldova. I am interested in how the political, economic and cultural changes after the collapse of the Soviet Union manifested themselves in the urban landscape of Chisinau. In my conception, the cityscape serves as a repository of layers of Moldovan history that have settled over the centuries; the cityscape reflects forces, needs and aspirations, as well as history inscribed in symbols and signs. In the case of Chisinau, these historical layers reflect the historical periods during which the Moldovan population was exposed to the various identity projects of more powerful regional players, notably Russia, Romania and the Soviet Union, and which influenced the identity and aspirations of the Moldovan population. In addition to the aforementioned layers, my dissertation examines the most recent one, neoliberal capitalism, and how the desire for Westernization and Europeanization after the fall of socialism changed the urban landscape of Chisinau and what this reveals about contemporary Moldovan society, its identities, memories and aspirations.

In my research, I argue that Chisinau is an example of the making of a neoliberal city, which has grown not only on the ruins of a socialist city but also on the remnants of other historical and mnemonic layers of a colonial nature. The research on Chisinau can contribute to the study of mentalities, European aspirations that may eventually grow into self-colonization, and different forms of belonging, memories and identities in the European borderlands.

CV

Education

2012-2016: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Ethnology, BA.

2017-2019: University of Tartu, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies. M.A.

Since 2020: Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of International Studies, Department of Russian and East European Studies, Ph.D