Talia Kollek

Talia Kollek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Her work with the HuRiEE Project focuses on legal consciousness and human rights mobilization in Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and Russia.

Talia's doctoral research examined Russian LGBTQ+ activism and emotion. Based on eight months of anthropological fieldwork with Russian queer people in Georgia, her thesis explored the role that emotion plays in processes of repression. She draws upon affect theory to explain the ways in which regimes structure and enforce normative ways of feeling. Talia's master's dissertation focused on Soviet ice hockey and propaganda, and her undergraduate work was on historical narratives in the Russian education system. 

Talia completed her DPhil in Russian and East European Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. Her MA was in Applied and Interdisciplinary History at the Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg, Russia), and her BA was in History and Classics at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada).