K. (Ksenia) Robbe, Dr

My research sits at the intersection of postcolonial and postsocialist studies, with the focus on the changing frameworks of memory and time-making; gender relations and transformations of feminism; and transnational connectivity that aims at social justice.

1.My current work revolves around the practices of remembering late 20th-century ‘transitions’ and the processes of long decolonization. I explore how memories – when shared and creatively engaged, whether in vernacular or mediated contexts – can produce new perspectives on the past that voice untold stories, interlink varied experiences, and make possible identifications around more egalitarian values. I study how such memories are (re)shaped in cultural productions (literature, film, theatre, visual art, and exhibitions). I’m also interested in how these memories are further mediated via reading, watching, and discussion. The primary contexts of my research are Russian/Russophone and South(ern) African cultures, and I have a special interest in comparing processes across these and other postsocialist and postcolonial sites.

My recent edited volume Remembering Transitions: Local Revisions and Global Crossings in Culture and Media  (De Gruyter 2023) engages with the pratices and epistemologies of cultural memory of the 1970-90s ‘transitions’ in a variety of media – from literature and film to protest music and social media. The volume brings together studies of memory in countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, Southern Africa, Latin America, and East Asia, which apply a national, regional or trans-regional focus. The book contributes to theory-making in critical memory studies by reflecting on how remembering transitions as ‘crises’ renders visible continuities between this past and the present.

For initial reflections on remembering ‘crises’ and anti-crisis thinking, see the collaboratively written essay in  (Un)timely Crises: Chronotopes and Critique (co-edited with Maria Boletsi, Kasia Mika and Natashe Lemos Dekker).

I am currently writing a monograph that focuses on the processes of remembering, rethinking, and reckoning with transformations of the 1980-1990s in contemporary South African and Russian literatures. This chapter juxtaposing examples from these two socio-cultural contexts and theorizing modes of remembering indicates some of the directions of this project.

My other work on remembering the ‘long’ post-apartheid and post-Soviet transitions includes essays on the changing practices of remembering the violence of decolonization/ transition; remembering the October revolution and perestroika in Russian activist art; memories of the 1990s in the 2020 protests in Belarus (with Andrei Zavadski); remembering late-apartheid activism during the 2015-16 student protests (here and here); and on re-mediating community arts of the 1970-80s in recent exhibitions.

2. The other important strand of my work tackles feminist pratices of writing, reading, archiving and organizing, often with the focus on the role and uses of memory.

This interest is rooted in my earlier research on generational relations in South African women’s writing, published as  Conversations of Motherhood: South African Women’s Writing Across Traditions (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2015) and gendered pratices of postmemory. Recently, I conducted research on feminist collective writing/reading pratices in Russia (forthcoming) and on feminist approaches to archiving the Russo-Ukrainian war in the photography and writing of Yevgenia Belorusets (with Dorine Schellens).

I am also interested in the histories and conceptions of Feminist Strike. Together with Senka Neuman-Stanivukovic and Kylie Thomas, I have edited a special issue on pratices of ‘feminist strike’, especially those that have remained less visible on a global scale. Together, the articles develop an optic of ‘feminist strike’ for reading resistance in movements from Zimbabwe to Iran, Belarus to India, Poland and Liberia, South Africa and Croatia.

Research groups and projects

From 2021 until 2024, I am a PI of the research project “Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions” conducted together with Agnieszla Mrozik (Polish Academy of Sciences), Andrei Zavadski (TU Dortmund) as well as Nora Korte and Alexander Formozov (‘Transition Dialogue’ Network). The project was awarded a NETIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking grant.  We are currently preparing a special issue on the concept and pratices of 'dialogic remembering'.

I am currently coordinating two research groups: Theories from the South and the East in Literature and Culture of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies and Transitions and Social Justice of the Agricola School for Sustainable Development, University of Groningen (with Senka Neuman-Stanivukovic and Sander van Lanen).

From 2018 until 2023, I was co-chair and founding member of the Postsocialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS) Working group of the Memory Studies Association. I was a member of the Programme and Organizing committees for the first (online) conference of the group.