Recherche

2019 – 2021. ‘Twin Cities across Five Continents: Interactions and Tensions on Urban Borders’, various institutions. Dr. Mikhailova led the book project as the lead co-editor.

2020 – 2021. "Cross-Border Urbanism: Comparison of Urban Forms and their Connectivity at the State Margins", University of Geneva. The project is carried out within the 2020-2021 Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship.

2018 - 2019. “The Transformation of Soviet Republic Borders to International Borders”, University of Eastern Finland, PI Prof. Dr. Jeremy Smith. As a member of the research team I was responsible for assessing dynamic relations in the Russia-Belarus-Ukraine triangle.

2015 - 2019. “Twin Cities: Urban Communities, Borders and Relationships over Time”, various institutions. I co-edited an international edited volume with a prominent British Urban Historian Dr. John Garrard. In addition to my scholarly and editorial input, I led communications with the 30-chapter authors, managed the book’s marketing campaign and book launch at three international conferences, and presented its findings during invited lectures at the University of Delhi (India) and Pompeu Fabra University (Spain).

2012 - 2014. FP7 EUBORDERREGIONS project, Barents Institute – Arctic University of Norway. As a research assistant, I was identifying and interviewing key actors of the Russian-Norwegian local and regional cross-border cooperation.

Intérêts

Borders, cross-border governance, sustainable development of border regions and border cities, city diplomacy, global cities, critical toponymy, symbolic landscape

Enseignements

September 2020 and 2021 – gave lectures ‘International Borders and Transboundary Dynamics Seen at Different Scales and in Different Spheres’ for BA students within the course T406067 ‘Territoires et frontières’, University of Geneva.

March-April 2021 – gave lectures ‘The Russian Arctic’ and ‘Cross-Border Twin Cities along Russia's Borders’ for MA students within the Program on Russia and Central Europe, Global Studies Institute, University of Geneva.

Projets

2021 – 2022. involved in preparation of funding applications within UNESCO Chair in Inclusive Toponymy ‘Naming the World’, University of Geneva.

2021. initiated and coordinated the research consortium ‘City Diplomacy in Times of COVID-19: Pandemic Response and the Future of Urban Sustainability’ with nine academic partners for the funding application to the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS).

2020 – 2021. "Cross-Border Urbanism: Comparison of Urban Forms and their Connectivity at the State Margins", University of Geneva. The project is carried out within the 2020-2021 Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship.

Présentations et Conférences

2021, November 18-21 53rd Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), New Orleans, USA. Presentation: ‘Development and Decay in Post-Partitioned Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island and its Urban Vicinity’

2021, August 16-20 34th International Geographic Congress “Geography: Bridging the Continents” (virtual). Presentations: ‘Twin Cities as Complex Urban Systems and the State-of-the-Art in Twin-City Research’ and ‘To Bridge or not to bridge? Connectivity on the Sino-Russian border’

2021, June 28-July 1 EUGEO congress 2021. Presentations: ‘Place Names and (Re)naming at Borderlands: Reflection on Cross-Border Urban Areas along Swiss and Russian Borders’ (with F. Giraut), ‘The State-of-the-Art in Twin-City Research: Editorial Notes to the Two Edited Volumes of “Twin Cities…” ’

2021, June 17-18 Journées d’étude du GDRus, Université Grenoble Alpes. Presentation: ‘Performing Slavic (Dis)Unity at the Russia-Belarus-Ukraine tri-border point over time’

2019, Nov 20. VERA Annual conference ‘From Deconstructing to Constructing Walls: 30 years after Berlin’, Finland.
Presentation: ‘Ukrainian-Belarusian border co-operation in securitised times’

2019, Sept 13. Monthly Digital Russian Studies webinar, Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.
Presentation: ‘The image of the ‘Slavic Unity’ festival in the media space’

2019, June 27. International Conference ‘Urban Identities: Past and Present’, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
Presentation: ‘International Twin Cities and Identity’

2018, Oct 4-5. International Conference ‘BoMoCult/CultChange conference: Methods, Approaches, Ethics’, University of Eastern Finland.
Presentations: a) ‘Media and Social Media Analysis for Investigating Cross-border Festivals: An Example of the Slavic Unity Festival in 2012-2018’, b) Book Launch of ‘Twin Cities: Urban Communities, Borders and Relationships Over Time’

2018, July 10-14. Association for Borderlands Studies World Conference, Vienna, Austria and Budapest, Hungary.
Presentations: a) ‘To Bridge or not to bridge? (Absence of) Infrastructure on the Sino-Russian border’ (with C.-T. Wu), b) Chapter presentation ‘Are Refugees Welcome to the Arctic?’ within the Book Launch ‘Europe as a continent of dreams’

2016, May 17-20. 15^th International ‘Border Regions in Transition’ (BRIT) conference ‘Cities, States and Borders: From the Local to the Global’, Hamburg, Germany and Sønderborg, Denmark.
Presentations: ‘Collaborative Problem Solving in the Cross-Border Context: Learning from Paired Local Communities along the Russian Border’