Minorities in the Soviet Union

In her research project at the Department of History, Prof. Dr. Olena Palko examines the global dimension of the Soviet nationalities policies. It asks how the Soviet Union managed ethnic and linguistic plurality domestically and how it promoted its policies as a model beyond its borders. Palko connects these questions to a broader analysis of minority protection in the interwar period and examines the international resonance of the Soviet model during the Cold War.

The historian also underscores the contemporary relevance of this historical research by tracing the long-term legacies of Soviet nationalities policies. These legacies continue to shape regional conflicts across the post-Soviet space, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where majority-minority relations are often politically instrumentalized. More broadly, the project engages with fundamental questions about the protection of minority rights and the erosion of diversity as a core democratic value.

The Material Afterlifes of Architecture

Dr. Cathelijne Nuijsink, at the Department of Social Sciences, sets out to examine how architectural history changes when it begins not with the making of buildings, but with their unmaking. She investigates what happens to buildings and their materials as they decay, are demolished, reused, or disposed of, while asking why their material afterlives have remained largely invisible in architectural archives and histories. By bringing these neglected afterlives into view, Nuijsink reorients architectural history around what happens beyond the apparent end of the building.

Together with her team, Nuijsink will trace how architectural waste is removed, circulated, repaired, reused, or permanently deposited, and examine the economic, social, and environmental relations these processes produce. The project thereby connects the material afterlives of buildings to broader questions of labor, environmental damage, and uneven exposure. It draws on environmental histories of architecture, discard studies, environmental justice, and critical race studies to develop a new account of architecture through its material endings.