Maria Engström

Professor at Department of Modern Languages; Slavic Languages

Telephone:
+46 18 471 13 05
E-mail:
maria.engstrom@moderna.uu.se
Visiting address:
Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3 L
Postal address:
Box 636
751 26 UPPSALA

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Short presentation

Maria Engström is Professor of Russian and Director of Russian studies at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University. Her research focuses on Russian intellectual history, late Soviet underground culture, post-Soviet illiberalism, imperial aesthetics and queer visuality in contemporary Russian culture, and the role of the Orthodox Church in contemporary Russian politics.

Research

Research Projects

Weaponizing Visual Cultures: Anti-Environmentalism and Neo-Extractivism in Contemporary Petrostates. The Cases of Russia and Azerbaijan (funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, 2026-2028). Maria Engström (PI) and Irina Seits (CI).

No(w)stalgia of Modernity: Neo-Soviet Myth in Contemporary Russian Culture (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2020-2024). Maria Engström (PI) & Aleksei Semenenko (CI)

The main goal of the project is to elucidate the most important spheres in which the neo-Soviet myth is perpetuated and used by various actors in the creation of new “post-post-Soviet” identity. One of the innovative points of the present study is that it will perform a systematic analysis of the key elements of the neo-Soviet myth as a complex aesthetic, ideological and commercial phenomenon. The project will thus fill in the gap in the studies on contemporary cultural and political discourses in Russia by analyzing this less studied but no less important aspect of contemporary Russian popular culture.

Visuality without Visibility: Queer Visual Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2017-2019). Maria Engström (PI) & Vlad Strukov (CI)

The project explores the history of queer visuality in Russian arts and media and how it’s been appropriated by the government, disabling queer visibility and disempowering LGBTQ communities in their struggle for civil rights. While we focus on art communities and practices such as painting, sculpture, photography and film, we’re concerned with broader social and political issues regarding free expression of identity and civil rights. Russia provides a case for the countries that share a legacy of communist ideology, sexual oppression and control. We’ll use an interdisciplinary approach of visual studies, work with archival materials, and uphold the critical study of images to analyse post-Soviet queer visuality.

Latest Publications:

Maria Engström & Aleksei Semenenko (eds). Soviet Myth in Post-Soviet Russia, Routledge, 2026 https://www.routledge.com/Soviet-Myth-in-Post-Soviet-Russia/Engstrom-Semenenko/p/book/9781041071914

Mark Lipovetsky, Maria Engström, Tomas Glanc, lja Kukuj and Klavdia Smola (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture, Oxford University Press. 2024 https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34707

Media

Maria Engström (2022). "För Putin har kriget bibliska proportioner", Svenska Dagbladet, https://www.svd.se/a/28kQGR/for-putin-har-kriget-bibliska-proportioner

Maria Engström

Publications

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Books

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