Maria Gunko

Maria Gunko is a DPhil Candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford, holding a Hill Foundation Scholarship and conducting research as part of the ERC-funded EMPTINESS project. She serves concurrently as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Geography Russian Academy of Sciences and Lecturer at the Faculty of Geography and Geoinformation Technologies, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Russia.

Her educational background includes an MSc in Human Geography from Moscow Lomonosov State University (2012) and a Candidate of Sciences in Human Geography from the Institute of Geography Russian Academy of Sciences (2015). She has held Visiting Fellowships at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig (2015) and the Institute of Geography Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2019).

Maria's research focuses on the intersection of urban studies and social anthropology, specifically examining state-space relations, infrastructuring, urban decay, and ruination in Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus. Her previous work analyzed governance, planning, and place-making in Russian shrinking cities, culminating in the 2022 Routledge edited volume Postsocialist Shrinking Cities.

Her recent publications demonstrate consistent thematic focus on post-socialist urban transformations, with increasing attention to geopolitical dimensions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The 15 most recent works reveal methodological diversity spanning ethnographic fieldwork, comparative analysis, and theoretical development around 'emptiness' as an analytical framework.

• Hill Foundation Scholarship for doctoral research
• Bourses Metchnikov short-term academic mobility grant from French Embassy in Moscow

Maria currently contributes to the ERC-funded EMPTINESS project exploring power and statecraft in Armenian towns through urban infrastructure management. Her previous fieldwork in Russian shrinking cities was supported by Leibniz Association funding for the ira.urban project on urban reconfigurations in post-Soviet space. She actively collaborates with international researchers across the Global East, evidenced by her co-editorship of the Routledge volume featuring scholars from China, Poland, and Lithuania.

As part of the EMPTINESS project team at Oxford, Maria collaborates with anthropologists and geographers examining urban voids across multiple post-socialist contexts. Her research connects with the Halloran Research Trust through her co-editor Chung-Tong Wu, suggesting potential involvement with this urban studies network.