Authors

Elena Bogdanova has been a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Social Research (CISR), Saint Petersburg, since 2001. She received the degree of Candidate of Sciences in Sociology (equivalent of PhD) in 2006. Currently she is working as a lecturer at the European University at St. Petersburg, assistant professor at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and visiting lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland. She has published nearly forty articles, one of which won the International Sociological Association’s worldwide competition for young sociologists in 2014. Her research interests include the anthropology and sociology of law, justice and regulative systems, Soviet society and postsocialist transformations, and qualitative methods. She is one of the editors of the book Communism and Consumerism: The Soviet Alternative to the Affluent Society (Brill, 2015). She is currently working on the book Complaints to the Authorities in Russia: Tradition and Legal Modernization (Routledge).

Mariya Godovannaya is a doctoral student at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria. She holds a master’s degree in sociology with a specialization in gender studies from the European University at St. Petersburg and MFA in film/video from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, USA. Among her interests are gender and queer theories, sociology of art, sociology of motherhood, queer feminism, experimental cinema, and contemporary art. Godovannaya has created experimental films, installations, and performances presented at international festivals and exhibitions, has independently curated film and video projects, and is a cofounder of the queer-feminist affinity art group Unwanted Organization. Her current art-research focuses on exploring nonmonogamous, nonheterosexual forms of queer kinship and queer parenthood.

Eline Helmer received her Master of Science in Russian and East European studies from the University of Oxford in 2015. Her research interests revolve around questions of identity related to Russian and European migration discourses. She currently works as a researcher at the Dutch Institute in Saint Petersburg.

Caterina Rohde-Abuba received PhD in sociology from the University of Bielefeld in 2013. Her doctoral dissertation, funded by a scholarship from the German Research Foundation, focused on the migration of Russian au pair workers. Currently, she is working as a senior research consultant at INFO GmbH Markt- und Meinungsforschung in Berlin, and she is an associated researcher at the Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Bielefeld.

Anna Temkina is a professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, head of the Sociology of Health and Gender Program (supported by Novartis Corp.), and codirector of the Gender Studies Program. Her research interests include sociology of reproductive health and everyday life, gender relations in post-Soviet societies, and qualitative research methods. She received her PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 1997. Temkina has published over a hundred works in Russian, English, German, Finnish, and Armenian, coedited five books, and coauthored a textbook in Russian, 12 Lectures in the Sociology of Gender (European University at St. Petersburg Press, 2015). Her monograph The Sexual Life of a Woman: Between Obedience and Freedom (European University at St. Petersburg Press, 2008, in Russian) examines the transformation of women’s roles and sexuality in post-Soviet societies. Temkina leads and participates in a number of research projects on issues of reproductive health, sexuality, and gender transformations in contemporary Russia.