Ksenia Litvinenko

Ksenia Litvinenko serves as a Research Associate at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Erkner, Germany, and commenced her Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship in December 2024. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), her fellowship supports critical research on Western Siberia's transformation during the late Soviet oil boom. She collaborates with the Research Group 'Histories of the Built Environment' led by Dr. Monika Motylińska to advance comparative studies of German and Soviet architectural frameworks.

Her educational foundation includes a PhD in Architecture from the University of Manchester (2023), secured through the President’s Doctoral Scholar Award and German Historical Institute Doctoral Fellowship. This training centered on dispersed archives of the Giproteatr Design Institute, examining Soviet cultural infrastructure development.

Litvinenko's research interrogates the material politics of extractivism through architectural lenses, with core interests in mobile dwellings, rotational urbanism, and Indigenous displacement in resource frontiers. Her work reveals transnational connections between Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc states in developing extractive infrastructure, particularly highlighting Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Czechoslovak contributions to Siberian oil settlements. Current projects analyze how construction technologies enabled Soviet industrialization in extreme environments while marginalizing Khanty and Nenets communities.

Her recent publications demonstrate a cohesive trajectory examining material constraints in architectural history, spanning Mongolian ger historiography, Soviet provisional architecture, theatre conservation, and extractivist urbanism. These works collectively bridge architectural history, postcolonial studies, and environmental humanities, emphasizing how built environments facilitated colonial resettlement and resource extraction across socialist territories.

Scientific recognition includes:

• Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship (DFG, 2024-2026)
• President’s Doctoral Scholar Award (University of Manchester)
• German Historical Institute Doctoral Fellowship

Litvinenko's DFG-funded project involves extensive archival fieldwork across Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, and the Czech Republic, investigating transnational construction collaborations that shaped Western Siberia's extractive landscape. While no formal advisees are documented, her collaborative work with the 'Histories of the Built Environment' group strengthens methodological approaches to studying architectural mobilities and material constraints in global contexts.

She actively contributes to the IRS Research Group 'Histories of the Built Environment,' which pioneers frameworks placing building materials at the center of architectural history research. This initiative facilitates international scholarly exchange on comparative approaches to twentieth-century construction practices and their socio-ecological consequences.