Anastasiia Bozhenko

E-mail : moc.liamg%402121oknehzobahttps://www.facebook.com/anastasiya.bozhenko

Anastasiia Bozhenko is a historian and urban researcher whose work focuses on architecture, urban planning, and heritage in Ukraine. She holds a PhD in History from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and works as a research assistant at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. Her research focuses on socialist cities, Soviet and post-Soviet architectural heritage, industrial and nuclear heritage, late modernist mass housing estates, as well as questions of destruction, preservation, and reconstruction in contemporary Ukraine. Alongside her academic work, she participates in public history and heritage initiatives dedicated to the study, documentation, and promotion of Ukraine’s architectural heritage.

Work experience

Leibniz-Institut Für Geschichte Und Kultur Des Östlichen Europa
Researcher: February 2025-present
V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Department Of Ukrainian Studies, Philosophical Faculty
Senior teacher: 2019-2025
Associate professor: 2026-present

Witnessing War Summer Institute, Kraków, July 16-19, 2022
Industrial Heritage as a Source of Social Empowerment and Economic Revitalization – Online Edition, CEU, July 6-10, 2020
Study visit in Germany (Berlin-Jena-Leipzig) “Dialog for Cohesive Cities”, November 4-11, 2019
Summer school in Rivne, “How the Cities (Don’t) Remember, August 7-11, 2017

- Website "Constructivist architecture of Kharkiv: a virtual city - a museum" (June-October 2020). Donor: Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.
- "Industrial Kharkiv" - (November 2018 - September 2019) Donor: NGO "Insha Osvita" in partnership with MitOst e.V. with the financial support of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Robert Bosch Foundation.
- Encyclopedia of Architecture of Ukraine (NGO Urban Forms Center, 2020, Ukrainian Cultural Foundation)
- Ukrainian Constructivism (NGO Urban Forms Center, 2021, Ukrainian Cultural Foundation)
- «The spirits of the KhODA» - The advocacy project for the restoration of the Kharkiv Province Administration with the financial support IBB gGmbH (October - December 2022).
- Kharkvi Architectural Manual (NGO Urban Forms Center, 2022, House of Europe)
- «The Embroidered City: The Industrial Towel of KhTZ» – a cultural project that combined traditional Ukrainian embroidery with the modern industrial motifs of the KhTZ district in Kharkiv (2024, supported by the Goethe-Institut and House of Europe).
- Residency «Modernism Revisited – Reflecting on the Architectural Legacy of the 20th Century» (October-November 2025, Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia)
- Beyond the Institute: Scientists, Families, and the War Experience in Piatykhatky (November 2025-May 2026, Documenting Ukraine Grants, IWM)
- Decolonisation of the Uncomfortable Architectural Heritage: the Case of Kharkiv (2024, DUSS Fellowship)

Publications:Kharkiv as a Citadel on the Frontier: Reimagining the City During the Full-Scale Invasion of the Russian Federation. In: Historical and Contemporary Challenges for Central European Cities: Narrating Contested Urban Space, pp.113-140, Editors: Anna Seidel, Elisa-Maria Hiemer, 10.5040/9798881898281.0009 (with Olesia Chagovets)
Trojan Horse of The Cold War: Nowa Huta as the Instrument of Soviet Influence on the Polish People’s Republic. City: History, Culture, Society, (15 (1), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.15407/mics2023.01.058
Living in Sotsmisto: between heritage and development. City History, Culture, Society, 2021, Vol. 12, pp. 9–23. https://doi.org/10.15407/mics2021.12.009 (with Oleksandra Sukhoveeva) (in Ukrainian)
Kharkiv as capital: utopia, constructivism, memory (1919–1934). City History, Culture, Society, 2020, Vol. 8, pp. 36–44. https://doi.org/10.15407/mics2020.08.036 (in Ukrainian)
Decolonization of the space. The uncomfortable heritage of Ukrainian socialist cities, Baltic Worlds, 2024 (with Olesia Chagovets)
Ekspertka, dantystka, blahodiinytsia: novi roli zhinok u prostori modernoho mista (Kharkiv na mezhi XIX – XX stolit). [Expert, dantist, benefactress: new women roles in the modern urban space (the case of Kharkiv in the late 19th-early 20th century].Zhinochi vymiry mynuloho: uiavlennia, dosvidy, reprezentatsii: /monohrafiia/ pid naukovoiu redaktsiieiu Oksany Kis. Lviv: Tsentr miskoi istorii; Instytut narodoznavstva NAN Ukrainy, 2023. C. 187-202 (inUkrainian)
“Architektura Radians'koi Ukrainy": the invasion of the socrealism". Ekzempliary XX, Chytomo. URL: https://chytomo.com/ekzempliary-xx/arkhitektura-radianskoi-ukrainy-sotsrealizm-nastupaie / (with Jevgeniia Gubkina, in Ukrainian)

Presentations:„Late Modernist Mass Housing Estates as a Living Heritage: the Cases of Kharkiv“, „Modernism in Europe – Modernism in Gdynia“, City of Gdynia/Faculty of Architecture at the Gdańsk University of Technology/National, Gdynia, 18.9.2025-20.9.2025 (18.9.2025)
„Late Modernist Heritage in Kyiv: Perspectives for Postwar Reconstruction“, „DOCONF2025“, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, 9.10.2025-11.10.2025 (10.10.2025)
“Decolonisation of the science history: Ukrainian perspective during full-scale invasion”, ICCEESS XI World Congress, London, 21-25.07.2025
„Dissonant industrial heritage during the war: between destruction and renovation“ (case of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia), SIEF2025, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, 3.6.2025-7.6.2025 (4.6.2025)
„Nuclear Heritage in Personal Dimension: the case of Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute“, „European Social Science History Congress“, International Institute of Social History, Leiden, 26.3.2025-29.3.2025 (28.3.2025)
Радянська архітектурна спадщина Харкова: між руйнуванням та реконструкцією [Sowjetisches Bauerbe in Kharkiv – zwischen Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau], Workshop „Vermessung der Zerstörung, Reparatur, Wiederaufbau. Eine neue Baukultur in der Ukraine?“, Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa/Sächsische Akademie der Künste/Stadt Leipzig, Leipzig, 3.4.2025-4.4.2025 (4.4.2025)
(Un)peaceful atom: nuclear heritage in the Ukrainian urban space, EAUH2024, Ostrava, September 4-7, 2024
Donbas landscapes: from industrial heritage to the battlefields, WCEH2024, Oulu, Finland, August 19-23, 2024
Dissonance architectural heritage in Ukraine during the full-scale-invasion: will it have a future? (case of Kharkiv), 36th CIHA World Congress 2024, Lyon, June 23-28th, 2024
Nuclear Landscape of Non-Atomic City: The Case of Kharkiv, Symposium "City / Energy Relations in Transformation", European Humanities University, Vilnius, February 28 ‒ March 1, 2024
Kharkiv as a Citadel on The Frontier: Reimagining the City during the Full-scale Invasion of the Russian Federation, Urban Narratives: Rebuilding and Rebranding European Cities from the 20th Century until Present Day, 18-20 October 2023, Herder Institute, Marburg, Germany (with Olesia Chagovets)
Decolonization of the space: the uncomfortable heritage of the Ukrainian socialistic cities, Decolonization of memory in the former Soviet spaces, 28-29 August 2023, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden (with Olesia Chagovets)

Beyond the Institute: Scientists, Families, and the War Experience in Piatykhatky

Decolonisation of the Uncomfortable Architectural Heritage: the Case of Kharkiv

THE CITY AND WAR: Transformations of Urban Images and Metaphors | WEBINAR 3

Almost all of our heritage is uncomfortable

City on the Edge: Chuhuiv as a Model for the Transformation of Territorial Capital

The project seeks to reframe Chuhuiv as a frontier city of memory, resilience, and cultural responsibility. As its core activity, it will implement a research and strategic residency that combines a comprehensive assessment of the city's territorial capital—including a spatial audit, analysis of cultural and living heritage, economic structure, and local interaction networks—with participatory workshops and strategic scenario planning.

RELOADING MACHNAČ

Modernism Revisited is an international residency programme within Trenčín 2026 – European Capital of Culture.

Our project focuses on the Machnáč Sanatorium — an iconic work of interwar modernism designed in 1929 by Jaromír Krejcar. Today, the building stands silent and unused, suspended between its remarkable past and an uncertain future. As researchers and cultural practitioners Anastasiia Bozhenko and Olesia Chahovets, we approach Machnáč not as a single architectural object, but as a combination of landscapes—morphological, topological, phenomenological, memorial, and symbolic. Through this lens, we explore how modernist architecture interacts with the body, memory, politics, and the natural environment. Our aim is to understand Machnáč as a layered and living environment: a place shaped by design visions, everyday practices, ecological conditions, and contemporary struggles for preservation. All these layers come together in the context of the Anthropocene, where questions of nature, care, and extractive modernity become impossible to ignore.

Embroidered city : industrial towel KhTZ

This is a cultural project that aims to combine the traditional Ukrainian art of embroidery with modern industrial motifs of the KhTZ district in Kharkiv. The project is designed to restore and promote the cultural heritage of the district by transforming industrial elements into art objects that highlight the history and modernity of the city.

‘Visual Identification of Heritage: Virtual Presentation of Public Spaces in Historic Ukrainian Cities’

Approaches to cultural heritage management based on sustainability (strengthening and improving indicators of cultural, social, economic and environmental impacts of heritage) are demonstrated on the example of 4 historical sites representing different historical and cultural regions, with different significance, types and preservation of cultural heritage.

‘Spirits of the HODA'

An advocacy project to restore the building of the Kharkiv State Regional Administration with the financial support of IBB gGmbH (October - December 2022).

Educational Hackathon «Cultural Heritage & Sustainability»

In 2022, Art Oborona, together with the Centre for the Development of Museum and Monument Studies, in collaboration with Khmelnytskyi National University and the Department of Information, Culture, Nationalities and Religions of the Khmelnytskyi Regional State Administration, developed and held a 5-day Educational Hackathon ‘Cultural Heritage & Sustainability’ on cultural heritage management with the support of the Goethe-Institut Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education.The hackathon format combined interactive lectures, master classes and workshops from experienced practitioners in heritage and sustainable development, programmable electronics, media art, clothing technologists, environmental designers, chemists, landscape designers, and restoration architects.The Hackathon was attended by cultural workers involved in working with cultural heritage.

‘Bicycle route through the cultural heritage sites of the Parafiyivska AH ‘From Park to Park’

The project ‘From Park to Park’ is being implemented by the Parafiyiv territorial community as part of the CultureTourismRegions grant programme from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation with the support of the State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine and the NGO ART OBORONA.

Research programme on modern approaches to heritage management.

i-Portunus Mobility за підтримки Goethe-Institut.

‘Constructivist architecture of Kharkiv: a virtual city - a museum’

This is a web portal about the heritage of avant-garde architecture in Kharkiv in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘Industrial Kharkiv’