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Katerina Suverina defended her doctoral thesis at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) in May 2022. From 2016 till 2022, she taught courses in gender studies, history of sexuality, trauma studies and critical theory. In September 2022, the “Akademisches Netzwerk Osteuropa” (akno e. V.) recognized her as a scholar at risk.  In 2022-2024, she worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Potsdam.

Her research project at the Zukunftskolleg is entitled “Biopolitical Violence and a Society of Hope: HIV/AIDS in the Late USSR” and focuses on the cultural history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic there. The project aims to examine how HIV/AIDS was imagined at the intersections of fear, angst and, unexpectedly, hope in the Soviet lay press and visual materials, in personal letters written by Soviet citizens, among health professionals and Soviet officials. One of the main research questions guiding her project is: How did different actors in the Soviet system contribute to the creation of a discourse of inverted care and the culture of stigma? How did the stigmatized image of HIV-positive people contribute to the spread and consolidation of conspiracy theories, fear and almost pervasive dehumanization during the late Soviet period?

The project is based on unique archival materials – numerous official documents (more than 2,500 archival lists), personal letters, newspaper and magazine articles (from 1981 to 1995), photos of the Infectious Diseases Hospital N^o 2 in Moscow, Soviet brochures on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and sexual education, etc. – which were collected in the period from 2020 to 2022.

We wish her all the best for her project and her time at the Zukunftskolleg!