Mischa Gabowitsch

Mischa Gabowitsch is Professor of Multilingual and Transnational Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Mainz in Germany, where he teaches at the Germersheim campus and directs the Russian sub-department within the Department of Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies.

His research spans several interconnected domains:

• Protest and social movements
• Commemorative practices and war memorials
• Memory studies and temporality
• Post-Soviet studies focusing on Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
• Multilingual media and comparative language policies in imperial contexts

Gabowitsch explores structural similarities between protest and commemorative movements, with particular attention to unexpected parallels across different historical and geographical contexts. His work extends beyond the former Soviet space to include transnational connections with Western, Central, and South-Eastern Europe as well as Latin America.

Currently working on four book projects about war memorials and commemoration, his research shows consistent thematic development around memory politics and visual culture. These projects include a history of Soviet war memorials, analysis of war memorial representation in history textbooks, and a global history of eternal flames.

Academically trained in interdisciplinary programs across Oxford, Paris, Moscow, Princeton, Potsdam, and Vienna, Gabowitsch's methodological approach combines Annales-style cultural history with French pragmatism, particularly the sociology of regimes of engagement. His quadrilingual capabilities (English, French, German, Russian) support his transnational research perspective, complemented by working knowledge of multiple other languages including Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Yiddish, and Portuguese.