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Centre for Urban Studies Centre for Urban Studies

Dr. O. (Olga) Sezneva

Associate Professor
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group: Cultural Sociology
Area of expertise: migration, memory, material culture, urban aesthetics, media piracy, Eastern Europe, Russia
Photographer: Olga Sezneva
Visiting address
  • Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
  • Room number: B6.18
Postal address
  • Postbus 15508
    1001 NA Amsterdam
Contact details
Links
Social media
  • Profile

    I am a cultural and urban sociologist who connects sociology with architecture, design, and artistic practice. I earned my PhD in Sociology at New York University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago before joining UvA in 2010. Along the way, I have taught and held visiting positions at the European University at St. Petersburg and Boğaziçi University. These experiences shaped both my international and interdisciplinary outlook.

    My main line of research explores how material culture, including urban design, intersect with histories and memories of conflict and forced migration. I focus in particular on the former German territories ceded in 1945 to Russia and Poland. In following the politics of memory formation in the Kaliningrad region, I looked at practices such as vernacular collecting and architectural revival, and how aesthetic categories, such as “beauty” or “ugliness,” are attributed to urban space. At present, I lead Contested Objects, Connected Histories (COCH), a project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). It examines the reinvention of the former German 'Bunzlauer ceramic' as Polish 'Bolesławiec pottery' after the transfer of Lowre Silesia to Poland, to demonstrate how a craft can be a tool for reworking history and belonging after displacement and in the context of new political membership.

    In addition to the politics of memory and resettlement, I studied the reproduction of media content and its illegalization—the phenomenon often labeled “piracy.” A collaborative project funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Assembly resulted in the book Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, to which I contributed the Russia chapter. This work reframed piracy not as a question of crime, but as a problem of inequality and access.

    Alongside my academic research, I work through art and curation. I am a member of the Moving Matters Traveling Workshop, a mobile collective of artists and scholars that uses performance, exhibition, and publication as methods of research into migration. The group, with my assistance, have collaborated with the Allard Pierson and the Hermitage Amsterdam, I and contributed writing to the project Kapelle der Versöhnung on Berlin’s former border strip. Together with architects, I helped launch Building the City Now! (BCNow!), a transdisciplinary postgraduate program in urban and social design accredited by UPC-BarcelonaTECH. Its 2013–14 edition in St. Petersburg brought together architects, sociologists, activists and city administrators to rethink how they shape the city. 

    All in all, my research, collaborations, and artistic practice share a common impulse: to reveal how memory, place, and cultural meaning are rebuilt after rupture, and to show how scholarship, art, architecture, and education can together open new ways of engaging with cities' past, present, and future.

  • Grants, Fellowships and Awards

    2025 

    Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek / Dutch Research Council Open Competition SSH M grant. The grant will support the interdisciplinary, multimodal research project  Contested Objects, Connected Histories (COCH), which explores the aftermath of violence, displacement and dispossession from a cultural perspective.

    2020

    Jean Monnet Networks (policy debate with the academic world), Erasmus+ Programme. Project The Securitization of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities and the Rise of Xenophobia in the EU (SECUREU) (reference number 620149-EPP-1-2020-1-ES-EPPJMO-NETWORK). Institutional partners: The Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), The University of Glasgow, The Herder Institute Marburg, The University of Amsterdam, The Institute for Minority Rights at European Academy Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC), The Council of European Studies (CES). Role: leader of the UvA/NIAS part of the consortium; co-investigator.

    2019

    The Aspasia grant of project number 016.Vici.185.077, financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO)

    Amsterdam Center for European Studies Research Grant ( €4,000)

    2018

    Research Fellowship at Herder Institute for Historical Studies of Eastern and Central Europe. Marburg, Germany. April-May (€5,000)

    Center for Urban Studies and Amsterdam Center for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. ‘Urban Valorization and the Heritage-Making’ (€10,000)

    2016

    Joint ‘Seed-grant’ from Center for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam, and STS Center, European University at St. Petersburg (€7,500)

    2013-2016

    Mega-Grant for International Research Cooperation. Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation (#14.U04.31.0001). ‘International Diaspora of Russian Computer Scientists.’ PI: Professor Mario Biagioli, University of California, Davies (RUB 70 100 000 / €1, 635 292)

    2007-2009

    Ford Foundation (U.S.A.) and The International Development Research Centre (Canada) joint grant($1.4 million). Project ’Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. A comparative study of Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico, and Bolivia. PI: Joe Karaganis, SSRC/American Assembly

     

    Teaching awards

    2020

    Nominee for the ‘Teacher of the Year’ award, University of Amsterdam

    2015

    Recipient of the ‘Professor of the Year’ award, European University at St. Petersburg

     

  • Publications

    2022

    2021

    2020

    • Chernysheva, L., & Sezneva, O. (2020). Commoning beyond ‘commons’: The case of the Russian ‘obshcheye’. The Sociological Review, 68(2), 322-340. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120905474 [details]
    • Chernysheva, L., Dányi, E., de la Cadena, M., Farquhar, J., Joks, S., Kondo, S., Lai, L., Law, J., Lin, W., Magelhães, B., Martínez Medina, S., M'charek, A., Mol, A., Sezneva, O., Swanson, H., & Østmo, L. (2020). Translating a title: On other terms. The Sociological Review, 68(2), 283-286. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120905470 [details]
    • Sezneva, O. (2020). Of trophy and triumph: Affective lives of dispossessed homes. In S. Watson (Ed.), Spatial Justice in the City (pp. 79-94). (Space, Materiality and the Normative). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351185790-6 [details]

    2018

    2015

    • Sezneva, O. (2015). Pirate cosmopolitics and the transnational consciousness of the entertainment industry. In P. Levitt, & P. Nyíri (Eds.), Books, Bodies, and Bronzes: Comparing sites of global citizenship creation (pp. 78-94). (Ethnic and Racial Studies). London: Routledge. [details]

    2014

    2013

    2012

    2010

    • Sezneva, O. (2010). Modalities of self-understanding, identification and representation in the post-1991 Kaliningrad: a critical view. In S. Berger (Ed.), Kaliningrad in Europa: nachbarschaftliche Perspektiven nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges (pp. 35-57). (Veröffentlichungen des Nordost-Instituts; No. 14). Harrassowitz. [details]

    2018

    2016

    • Sezneva, O. (2016). Cities of Socialism: Migration, Mass Housing and Political Change an Eastern Europe And The Soviet Union after World War II: [Review of: S.E. Harris (2013) Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life After Stalin; K. Lebow (2013) Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism and Polish society, 1949-56; G. Thum (2011) Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław During the Century of Expulsions]. Journal of Urban History, 42(5), 1153-1157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144216676776 [details]

    2012

    2011

    2015

    2014

    2016

    • Sezneva, O. (Other). (2016). Polis: lessons of the European Prize for Public Space: An exhibition of project of redevelopment of public space. Exhibition

    2012

    • Sezneva, O., & Dodsworth, F. (2012). Safer Cycling: mobilising politics and infrastructure in Amsterdam and London. Paper presented at Promises: Crisis and Socio-Cultural Change, Manchester, United Kingdom.

    Prize / grant

    • Sezneva, O. (2025). Contested Objects, Connected Histories (COCH).
    • Sezneva, O. (2013). Mega-Grant for International Research Cooperation. Project ‘International Diaspora of Russian Computer Scientists.’ (2013-2016).

    Membership / relevant position

    • Sezneva, O. (2015). Member, American Sociological Association.
    • Sezneva, O. (2015-2017). American Sociological Association, Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago.
    • Sezneva, O. (2013). Co-director, IMES, UvA.
    • Sezneva, O. (2011). Co-director, IMES, IMES.
    • Sezneva, O. & Guadeloupe, F. E. (2011). Organizer, NWO-ICSSR conference 'Religion and Ethnicity in the Age of Globalization.
    • Sezneva, O., Vermeulen, F. F. & Kalir, B. (2011). Co-organizer. Race and Whiteness in Comparative Perspective conference, IMES.
    • Sezneva, O. (2010-2013). member of the editorial board, Contemporary Sociology.
    • Sezneva, O. (2010-2011). Editorial Board, Contemporary Sociology.
    • Sezneva, O. (2010-2011). member, Council for European Studies.
    • Sezneva, O. (2010-2011). local organizing committee member, RC21 Conferece.

    Media appearance

    • Sezneva, O. (30-04-2016). Polis: learning from the European Prize for Public Space [Web] The Village online. Polis: learning from the European Prize for Public Space.
    • Sezneva, O. (02-05-2012). Transnational Piracy Research in Practice: A Roundtable Interview with Joe Karaganis, John Cross, Olga Sezneva, and Ravi Sundaram [Print] Television and New Media: volume 13, issue 5, pp. 447-458. Transnational Piracy Research in Practice: A Roundtable Interview with Joe Karaganis, John Cross, Olga Sezneva, and Ravi Sundaram. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527476412443566
    • Sezneva, O. (03-10-2011). Pirates [Radio] mfwu.org, New York City. Pirates.

    Talk / presentation

    • Sezneva, O. (speaker) (24-5-2018). Pride and Property: Emotions, Justice and the Changing Regimes of Ownership in Kaliningrad, the Former Königsberg, Material Feelings: Population Displacement and Property Transfer in Modern Europe and Beyond, Leipzig.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) & Ossman, S. (invited speaker) (20-10-2016). Traveling Narratives and Images in Times of Migration, The Norwegian University Centre in Paris, NUCP/Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.
    • Sezneva, O. (speaker) (30-6-2016). Displacement, Dispossession, Affect. The circulation of Koenigsberg’s material culture in the contemporary Kaliningrad., Spatial Justice in the City, Milton Keynes.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (2016). Invited paper ‘Pride and Property’, Workshop Spatial Justice at Manchester University, Manchester.
    • Sezneva, O. (speaker) (2016). Moving Matters Traveling Workshop and Conference. Invited speaker., Travelling workshop at Center for Globalization Studies, University of California , Riverside.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (2016). Invited plenary speaker, Conference VDNKh, St. Petersburg.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (23-10-2015). Value, Intellect and the Commodity Form in the Age of Digital Technology, Invited lecture at ‘Club Context’, Sint Petersburg.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (17-9-2015). ‘Between Duree and Obduracy. On the Construction of Continuity in Urban Space’, Plenary lecture. Conference: Urban STS. Reassembling the Field. European University at St. Petersburg., St. Petersburg.
    • Sezneva, O. (speaker) (11-8-2015). Pirate Cosmopolitics and the Transnational Consciousness of Entertainment Industry.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (20-7-2015). Debating Citizens in Search for Publicness, Invited speaker at ‘Places vs Scenarios’. Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Barcelona.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (12-6-2015). Order and Disorder in Contemporary City, Key-note address, launch of Open University intiative, St-Petersburg. http://eu.spb.ru/sts/news/15080-olga-sezneva-v-otkrytom-universitete
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (14-12-2012). Rethniking Copyright Through Copy in Russia, VDNKh, European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) & Chauvin, S. (invited speaker) (3-12-2011). Value, intellect and the obsolescence of commodity (invited paper), Critical Historical Studies conference (University of Chicago and The Social Theory Workshop), Chicago. http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/socialtheory/files/2011/09/3ct-CHS-Pamphlet-final.pdf
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (6-9-2011). We Have Never Been German: lessons from the forced migration, Framing the City, CRESC Annual Conference, Manchester.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (25-8-2011). Doing Research on Piracy: Issues of the Method (invited paper), Global Congress on Public Interest, Washington, DC.
    • Sezneva, O. (invited speaker) (15-4-2011). Rethinking Copyright Through the Copy (invited paper), NYLUM (New York University and LSE): Cultures of Circulation conference, Ottowa.

    Others

    • Roei, N. (organiser), Pols, J. (organiser), Lane, M. (organiser), Stergioula, S. (organiser), Parry, M. (participant), Sezneva, O. (participant), Krause, K. (participant), Vroon, V. (participant), Yalciner, G. (participant), Camuti, F. (participant) & Phillips, S. (participant) (12-10-2023). ArtiC interfaculty meeting, Amsterdam. ArtiC interfaculty meeting (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) & Gantner, E. (organiser) (13-9-2018 - 14-9-2018). Heritage Activism in Cities of Eastern Europe and Russia from 1968 to the Current, Marburg (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • van de Kamp, L. (participant), Halauniova, A. (participant), Birdsall, C. (participant) & Sezneva, O. (participant) (18-5-2018). Urban Valorisation: Cultural Forms, Local Heritage and Redevelopment Agendas (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) (17-5-2018). Urban Valorization - Traverse Heritage: Voice, Body, Movement, Amsterdam (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • van de Kamp, L. (participant), Sezneva, O. (organiser), Birdsall, C. (organiser) & Halauniova, A. (organiser) (17-5-2018). Urban Valorization - Traverse Heritage: Voice, Body, Movement, Amsterdam. Moving Matters Traveling Workshop in Hermitage, Amsterdam (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • van de Kamp, L. (participant), Sezneva, O. (organiser), Halauniova, A. (organiser) & Birdsall, C. (organiser) (17-5-2018). Museum Performance: Traverse Heritage: Voice, Body, Movement, Amsterdam (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) (28-3-2018 - 30-3-2018). 25th International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago. panel organiser and presenter. Panel: Arts of Migration. Performance and non-fiction reading. (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (chair) (12-12-2016). Spui25. Lights of Russia: Russian IT Development, Amsterdam (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) (22-10-2016). Spui25. Soviet Cybernetics, a public lecture by Diana West, Amsterdam (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) (17-5-2016 - 20-5-2016). ‘Live Infrastructure’, St. Petersburg (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (other) (28-4-2016 - 26-5-2016). Organizer: Polis: four lectures on urban development by invited international speakers (other).
    • Sezneva, O. (participant) (16-12-2015 - 19-12-2015). at European University at SPb (in cooperation with ITMO University (St Petersburg), UvA), Sint Petersburg. Co-organizer: ‘Computational and Social Sciences: Erasing the Boundaries’ (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (participant) (14-12-2015). In cooperation between CUS and IMES, Amsterdam. Organizer: ‘Being Political in Architecture and Urban Design’ (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (participant) (17-9-2015 - 19-9-2015). At European University EUSPB (in cooperation with CSTS-U of Munich and ETH-Zurich), Sint Petersburg. Co-organizer: ‘Urban STS: reassembling the field’ (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sezneva, O. (organiser) (25-8-2012 - 27-8-2012). MISOCO annual conference., UvA, Amsterdam. Mobility: a new paradigm? (organising a conference, workshop, ...).

    2024

    • Chernysheva, L. (2024). Neighboring alone? Digitally mediated communal life in a post-socialist large housing estate. [Thesis, externally prepared, Universiteit van Amsterdam]. [details]
    • Sefkatli, P. (2024). City rhythms in action: Advancing the methodologies and concepts for a spatio-temporal perspective on the urban social context. [Thesis, fully internal, Universiteit van Amsterdam]. [details]

    2023

    2022

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